German foreign trade finance specialist DF Deutsche Forfait AG (DF Group) has snapped up the insolvent Berlin-based craft beer producer Vagabund Brauerei.
The sum of the transaction, completed yesterday (1 July), was not disclosed.
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DF Group will take over 100% of the brewery’s assets as part of the deal, marking its first venture into M&A.
The brewer now sits as a subsidiary of DF Group’s food and drinks unit, DF Food & Beverage Holding.
Vagabund’s brewing site in the Osram-Höfe business park in Berlin and taproom in Wedding will remain in use, said DF Group, “under new management with new ideas”.
The brewer became insolvent earlier this year, due to “exploding procurement costs and a failed financing round”, co-founder and former managing director, Matthew Walthall said in a statement.
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By GlobalData“We are therefore all the more pleased that DF Group approached us to take over and continue the business operations and the brewery.”
Accompanying the release of its annual report in April, CEO Dr Behrooz Abdolvand said the group was looking to “tap new business areas from our own M&A activities and thus successively expand our field of activity”.
Commenting on the purchase of Vagabund, Hans-Joachim von Wartenberg, executive member of the DF Group management board, said the brewer “presented us with a unique opportunity to realise the diversification of our business areas with the announced M&A strategy.
“We came to an agreement with the insolvency administrator very quickly and will now maintain the well-known traditional values of the ‘Vagabund’ with a new management team and use new ideas to take the brewery’s previous success beyond the city limits of Berlin.”
Set up in 2009, Vagabund Brauerei produces more than 150 beer varieties, including Belgian ales, pale ales, double IPAs, stouts, Berliner Helles and a 0% Hopwater.
Its goods were sold in the on- and off-premise in Germany to bars, restaurants and major retailers including REWE and Edeka. It also sold products directly to consumers across Europe through its website.
Headquartered in Cologne, DF Group is a specialist in foreign trade finance for the food, healthcare, pharmaceutical, industrial, energy and infrastructure sectors in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asian markets.
The company has also been involved in independent trading of agricultural commodity goods since 2023.
