Campari Group is to sell its sole manufacturing site in Australia.
The Italian spirits heavyweight has inked a deal to offload the facility in the Derrimut suburb of Melbourne in the state of Victoria to local contract packager Garage Beverages.
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Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The sale is expected to be completed by the middle of the year, Campari said in a statement.
Garage Beverages, which offers canning and bottling line services, will continue to produce Campari’s ready-to-drink products such as the Wild Turkey range.
In the statement, Campari’s managing director for Australia, Jacopo Borsa, said the sale of the Derrimut site was part of the business’s wider aim to home in on marketing and sales of its brands.
“We are pleased to partner with Garage Beverages, a local manufacturer with extensive manufacturing experience and a strong commitment to excellence. We look forward to working with Garage Beverages over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition,” he said.
According to Campari’s website, the Derrimut site is the group’s sole production facility in the country. It also has four offices located in north Sydney, Melbourne, Newstead, Queensland, and east Perth.
Campari told Just Drinks that as part of the deal Garage Beverages would be offering positions “where possible, to Campari employees”. It did not confirm how many employees were at the site.
According to its annual report for 2024, the Aperol maker employs 212 people in Australia.
In the year, Campari’s Australia business saw net sales dip 6% dip in reported terms on 2023 and drop 5.5% on an organic basis, to €115.8m ($125m). The region made up 53.5% of sales in its Asia-Pacific market.
The move to offload the Derrimut site follows the company’s announcement of implementing a new “cost containment” plan in October, which looks to improve margins by 200 basis points.
In February, the group also revealed a “organisational restructuring” as it looked to improve its financial position.
In a statement to Just Drinks at the time, the business said it was “gradually implementing a comprehensive set of company initiatives to accelerate growth and profitability via focus, simplification and cost containment”.
Part of this plan, Campari said, included “some tough decisions, such as organisational restructuring” in a bid “to ensure a return to the overall medium and long-term financial health and sustainability of Campari Group”.
The Appleton Estate distiller did not mention how many employees would be impacted by the move at the time, noting: “This is a wide and ongoing process that includes the implementation of a new operational model; therefore, it is currently difficult to provide a specific global number.”
