Beston Global Food Company has entered voluntary administration after an attempt to sell the South Australian dairy company failed.
Beston, a major processor of dairy products available in OTR, Metcash, and Woolworths, said in a statement that it had experienced “a perfect storm of adverse events in recent times”.
Megmilk Snow Brands, a Japanese company made an offer to acquire Beston’s cheese and lactoferrin production facility in Jervois, but that sale did not eventuate.
Fabrizio Jorge, CEO of Beston, said he deeply regrets that the Megmilk Snow Brands offer could not be progressed through to completion.
“The Megmilk offer would have enabled all of the jobs at Jervois to be preserved and would have led to an increase in demand for milk for processing at the Jervois factory over time.
“It would have represented a win for the workers, a win for our loyal dairy farmers and ultimately would have been a win for the whole of South Australia as the significance of the Jervois plant in producing premium quality, health enhancing products from dairy have become increasingly recognised around the world via the global marketing and distribution networks of Megmilk Snow Brands.”
Beston entered Covid with relatively little debt and came out the other side with a debt burden that weighed heavy as interest rates and operating costs increased and global dairy commodity prices remained volatile.
The company has appointed KPMG’s Tim Mableson, James Dampney, Gayle Dickerson and David Kidman as voluntary administrators.
The administrators have just commenced the administration process where they now control the assets, trading, and day-to-day operations of Beston, with the priority being to undertake an immediate assessment of the business and its operations to assess options and notify stakeholders of the appointment.
The Administrators current intention is to continue to trade Beston while an assessment of trading is undertaken and options for its sale and/or recapitalisation are explored.
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