SWEDEN – Tetra Pak has acquired Big Drum Engineering, a company that develops, builds and installs filling machines and systems for the ice cream and general food industry, to strengthen its product offering for ice cream manufacturers.
The deal will expand Tetra Pak’s ability to provide end-to-end solutions for the food and beverages companies.
The company already provides full range ice cream equipment, raw material storage and other production solutions for moulded and extruded ice cream products.
“This acquisition means we can now provide an even more extensive range of production solutions for ice cream manufacturers and expand our collaboration with them”, said Tetra Pak Executive Vice President of processing systems Monica Gimre.
“This, in turn, will allow us to deliver even greater value, by securing efficiencies in technical service across a number of different lines, and offering portfolio-wide support to their product development and marketing activities.”
The acquisition of Big Drum will strengthen Tetra Pak’s presence in the filled ice cream segment, which represents half of the global packaged ice cream market.
Big Drum managers and employees will remain with the company at their current location in Edertal, Germany.
“We see significant growth opportunities through Tetra Pak. We are convinced that we will be able to provide stronger support to our customers, thanks to Tetra Pak’s worldwide presence, extensive sales and service channels, technical support and expertise in food manufacturing”, said Big Drum Managing Directors Hans-Peter Trosse and Matthias Ruppert.
The company has invested of late to build up its capacity in the ice cream industry. It recently introduced an ice cream extrusion line that caters for medium scale processors.
