Paul Lederer negotiates to sell Real Dairy Australia to Schreiber Foods
The proposed sale was reported by the Australian Financial Review. Real Dairy Australia manufactures and distributes processed cheese, dairy fats and functional ingredients for Australian retailers, quick-service restaurants and export markets. The deal would be Mr Lederer’s largest corporate agricultural transaction since the sale of Primo Smallgoods to JBS in 2015.
Real Dairy operates processing and packaging facilities in New South Wales and Queensland. Its sites in Wauchope, Greenacre and Darra handle cheese cutting, shredding, slicing and melting formulations for commercial kitchens. The business processes thousands of tonnes of cheddar, mozzarella and specialty curd blocks each year, and also operates cold-storage hubs and temperature-controlled logistics serving domestic and export shipments.
The company supplies both private-label and branded products to Woolworths and Coles. Its operations include computerized slicing equipment, nitrogen-flushed retail packaging and 10-kilogram food-service units. Real Dairy also sources bulk cheese blocks from Australian dairy co-operatives and partner volumes from New Zealand.
Schreiber Foods is an employee-owned dairy manufacturer based in Wisconsin. It has annual sales of more than $7bn from operations in North America, Europe and Asia, producing processed cheese, natural cheese, cream cheese and cultured products. The company has not previously had dedicated manufacturing assets in Oceania, according to the source. Its potential acquisition of Real Dairy would add Australian plants and supply arrangements to its existing operations.
The Australian market also includes Bega Cheese, Saputo Dairy Australia, Lactalis and Fonterra. Schreiber has said it can finance the transaction using internal cash and syndicated institutional credit facilities, while the source described the company as having conservative debt levels and strong operating cash flow. The proposed transaction value was not disclosed beyond Real Dairy Australia’s reported annual gross revenue of about $600m.
Formal merger filings have already been submitted for statutory review. The process will determine whether the transaction can proceed. If completed, the acquisition would transfer ownership of Real Dairy’s Australian processing infrastructure to Schreiber Foods and place the business within Schreiber’s international distribution network, including markets in Southeast Asia and East Asia.
