Fountain, Gravox and Saxa could be under new ownership by the end of the year after their Japanese owner put the famous brands up for sale with an expected pricetag of about $300 million.
Suntory Beverage and Food said on Wednesday it was looking to offload its Cerebos Australia and Cerebos Gregg's New Zealand operations following a strategic review.
The Japanese soft drink giant will retain its fast-growing fresh coffee business that includes Toby's Estate.
The products up for grabs include sauces, gravies, herbs, spices, salt, condiments, Asian sauces, desserts and cooking ingredients, with investment bank UBS appointed to advise on the sale.
Cerebos operates one food manufacturing facility in Sydney and an instant coffee operation in New Zealand, which has about 800 staff in total.
Terry Svenson, the current chief executive of Cerebos Australia/New Zealand, said on Wednesday that Suntory's core focus was on the beverage market, which led to the decision to put its food and instant coffee operations up for sale.
"SBF remains committed to investing in fresh coffee to capitalise on our market leading positions to grow the business further," said Mr Svenson, who will lead the new Fresh Coffee business.
"Cerebos' fresh coffee brands are a strong complement to SBF's existing beverage portfolio globally."
Mr Svenson said the food and instant coffee business had a number of market-leading brands across Australia and New Zealand including Fountain, Gravox, Saxa, Foster Clark's, Gregg's, Bisto, Raro and Asian Home Gourmet.
"While we have made great progress in recent years, including significant improvements to the efficiency of our manufacturing operations, food and instant coffee are not a core category focus for SBF and growth opportunities can potentially be maximised under different ownership," he said.
SBF has been listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchance since 2013, and booked sales of about 1.4 trillion yen ($17.13 billion) in 2016.
SBF will retain the Fresh Coffee business which will form part of a new business unit focused on capturing a larger share of the rapidly growing global fresh coffee market.
Mr Svenson said the sale process, which will be run by investment bank UBS, was expected to take 6-9 months.
"In the meantime, it's business as usual for our people, our customers and our consumers with no change to our day-to-day operations," he said.
"We will continue to advise our key stakeholders of updates during the process," he said.
With AAP
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