Breakfast cereal maker Weetabix is in advanced talks to sell two of its American businesses for a total of about $110m, according to the Times newspaper.
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The company is working with NM Rothschild to sell its peripheral Barbara’s Bakery and private label cereal maker businesses to focus on its main Weetabix, Alpen and Ready Brek brands, the paper said.
Weetabix, which is owned by Lion Capital, the former European division of the private equity firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, is thought to be in discussions with several suitors to sell the units separately.
Ralcorp, the US private food label, is among the remaining bidders for Weetabix’s own label unit, based in Massachusetts. The unit supplies many of America’s biggest grocery stores with products such as toasted oat hoops, wheat squares and organic raisin bran.
Analysts said that food groups such as Kraft Foods, Kellogg’s and General Mills could be interested in the Barbara’s Bakery business, which makes cereal bars and high-energy granola bars, which incorporate ingredients such as oats, fruit and nuts.
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By GlobalDataHicks, Muse’s European buyout unit bought Weetabix in November 2003, about a year before the unit became independent from Hicks, Muse.
The sale of the Weetabix businesses would represent the first disposals for the independent unit, which became Lion Capital in April.
