Record 80 acquisitions in August

August indeed. The bevblog.net mergers and acquisitions database registered an all time record 80 food and drink transactions in the course of the past month.

Many of them were enormous. In fact 6 exceeded not just $1,000 million but also $2,000 million:

• $6,800 million in packaging for Australia’s Amcor to buy US based Bemis
• $5,100 million in coffee for Coca-Cola to acquire UK based Costa from Whitbread
• $3,900 million in cannabis-based non-alcoholic beverages for Constellation Brands to gain 38% of Canada’s Canopy Growth Corp
• $3,200 million in soft drinks for PepsiCo to take over Israel based SodaStream International
• $3,100 million in beer for Heineken to build a 40% stake in China Resources’ CRH Beer
• $2,160 million in meat for US based Tyson Foods to win Keystone Foods from Marfrig of Brazil.

That’s almost $25,000 million from those 6 alone.

The key categories were soft drinks with 14 deals, alcohol with 12, dairy with 11, services with 10 and packaging with 7. Meat, plant-based and snacks came next with 3 each.

44 were domestic affairs. 29 of these were in the United States, with 4 each in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. 36 were across borders.

Of the 80 total, 47 involved the United States, 12 the United Kingdom, 6 Australia, 5 Canada and 4 each France, India and the Netherlands.

11 were funding rounds.