Unilever offloads black tea business as UK passion for cuppa goes cold
Unilever has called time on the traditional cuppa with a €4.5bn (£3.8bn) deal to sell its tea business, which includes PG Tips and Brooke Bond, to a European private equity firm.
When the company hoisted the “for sale” sign back in 2020 Unilever’s chief executive, Alan Jope, complained that traditional tea drinkers were dying off, while younger consumers preferred coffee and fashionable herbal teas.
Pointing to falling sales of black tea, he said fans were “getting older and consuming less and starting to fall over”. Traditional “builder’s tea” drinkers were “not into experimenting and trying new products”.
The spun-off tea business, called Ekaterra, which had sales of €2bn of last year, is being acquired by CVC Capital Partners, which saw off
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