UK – Consumer goods company, Unilever has agreed to acquire UK based healthy eating snack brand, Graze from investment firm The Carlyle Group to expand its portfolio of healthy and consumer-focused products.

The deal further strengthens Unilever’s focus on products that meet the changing consumer need for natural, organic, and health and wellness variants.

Healthy snacking and out of home markets are fast growing driven by global concerns over food-related diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

Addition of Graze to its brands adds to Unilever a range of products including snacking nuts, seeds, trail mixes and snack bars, with no artificial ingredients.

Anthony Fletcher, CEO Graze

“Graze is the leading healthy snacking brand in the UK – delivering consumers fabulously tasty snacking options, delivered in beautiful packaging.

A truly multichannel brand, graze offers personalisation, convenience and great nutrition, brilliantly meeting the needs of millennial consumers,” said Nitin Paranjpe, President of Unilever’s Food & Refreshment business.

“Accelerating our presence in healthy foods and out of home this is an excellent strategic fit for the Unilever Food & Refreshment business, and a wonderful addition to our stable of purpose driven brands.

We look forward to working with the graze team to grow the business, leveraging their tech and ecommerce expertise for our wider portfolio, and offering more consumers the opportunity to snack in a healthier way.”

Graze was founded in 2008 as a snack box delivery service and has since expanded its reach to retail stores, ecommerce and direct to consumer.

Its products are currently available in over 30,000 top retailers across the UK, including Sainsbury’s, Costco, Boots, WH Smith and Tesco, and in the US, they are available in retailers such as Target, Walgreens and 7-Eleven.  

Anthony Fletcher, graze CEO said: “This deal marks a transformational moment in graze’s growth journey. graze believes that learning from Unilever’s sustainable living plan will become a key driver for the business.

“Graze has an incredibly exciting future ahead as part of Unilever and we look forward to working closely with the team to keep on inventing new healthy snacks, as well as continuing to work to understand the role technology can play in improving the food industry.”

The transaction details have not been disclosed but according to Sky News, it is bid is estimated at US$194.3 million.