Sale of Metro Food Co

Canterbury Partners is pleased to have acted as advisor to the founders of Metro Food Co on their divestment to Openway Food Co, a vertically integrated health food platform backed by one of Australia’s leading Private Equity firms, Five V Capital.

Launched in 2017, Metro Food Co (via its grocery brand ‘Keep it Cleaner’) has been a leading FMCG innovator, challenging convention, and delivering nutritious products to consumers. With over 80 SKUs across the health food, sports & nutrition, toddler and chilled health food aisles, every bite reinforces the brand’s philosophy of creating healthy, affordable, nutritious, and convenient goodness.

Openway Food Co, a vertically integrated health food platform, includes a number of other innovative health food businesses including branded food business Table of Plenty, as well as Annex Foods, which owns the Raise the Bar, Red Tractor and Hammer & Tuffy’s brands as well as high quality manufacturing assets. The current combined group is expected to generate annual sales in excess of $100 million. With over 150 SKUs in its stable, Openway aims to drive its domestic market performance and build on the entry of its brands into China and the U.S.

The transaction provided the founders with the ability to crystallise some of the significant value they had created over Metro’s relatively short history, whilst also providing the opportunity to partner with Five V, a highly experienced management team and other founders within Openway to continue to grow the business.

Canterbury Partners did an outstanding job preparing & navigating our business through the sale process. The team’s professionalism, coupled with their learned knowledge of our company led to a fantastic outcome for all shareholders.
– Tom Paton, Metro Food Co. CEO & Co-Founder