Bloomberg: The chief executive officer of Altia Oyj says he’s now ready to consider spending money on mergers again after a half-decade hiatus.
The Finnish alcohol maker and distributor spent the past five years absorbing the companies it bought from 2000 to 2013. Its CEO, Pekka Tennila, says “a natural next step” now is expanding in northern Europe, and M&A is the likely tool through which to do that.
“Our profitability has gone up quite a bit and now our sales are also turning up,” the 49-year-old Tennila, who became CEO in 2014, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Helsinki. “This gives us an opportunity to look into acquisitions as well.”
Altia distills Koskenkorva vodka in the village that carries the same name. It makes Renault and Larsen cognacs in France and imports wines under the Chill Out brand. Many of its key products are heritage brands well known in their own countries, such as O.P. Anderson aquavit, first produced in 1891 in Sweden.
The CEO has already identified a gap: premium gin is booming, especially in Europe, and Altia has no well-known craft gin brand in its offering. In 2016, Altia launched a fusion gin produced in house — the Nordic Spirits Lab gin mixed with aquavit botanicals — and earlier this month it set up a distribution partnership with Herno Gin of Sweden.
