PwC Deals supports consortium acquisition of Langeberg & Ashton Foods

Background

PwC Deals supports consortium acquisition of Langeberg & Ashton Foods (“L&AF”), helping safeguard approximately 3,000 jobs in Ashton in the Western Cape. 

Tiger Brands Limited is a South African packaged goods company, listed on the JSE. It is South Africa's largest foods group, with its core business being the manufacture, marketing and distribution of everyday branded food and beverages.

Langeberg Foods (Pty) Ltd, formerly Langeberg & Ashton Foods (“L&AF”) - a division of Tiger Brands, has been a leader in the global market for canned deciduous fruit for over 60 years. The business is based in and by far the largest employer in the town of Ashton in the Western Cape with the majority of produce sourced within a 120km radius.   

In 2025, a consortium of buyers consisting of the Ashton Fruit Producers Agricultural Co-operative and the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries (“Norfund”) acquired the L&AF operations from Tiger Brands with the sale effective 1 October 2025. 

As part of the transaction, Tiger Brands committed R150 million towards the establishment of a Community Trust, aimed at socio-economic development initiatives benefiting the broader Langeberg community. The Trust will invest a portion of the  
R150 million in Langeberg Foods, in exchange for ten percent (10%) equity shareholding, with the remaining portion retained to fund socio-economic development initiatives from inception. 

The dividends and benefits from the 10% stake held by the Langeberg Community Trust will be used to support socio-economic development in the broader Langeberg region. 

We acted as a financial advisor to the buyers in the transaction, with a focus on financial due diligence (“FDD”) services, which we embraced given the significant societal impact on the transaction.  We successfully delivered on our scope of work, fulfilling our clients’ needs.  

Other advisors performed valuations, ESG and technical due diligence. In collaboration with them, we identified several value-adding opportunities and provided insights to our clients by leveraging the capabilities of our ADA team to deliver big data insights, guidance on separation considerations and value creation opportunities post deal.

We leveraged the expertise of our ADA team to test specific deal hypotheses around: 

1. the effectiveness of SKU rationalisation,  

1. product level profit margins, and  

1. customer churn trends. 

The deal hypotheses were used to inform not only the transaction, but also the new standalone business’s management team going forward. We presented our findings through dynamic visualisation tools (the PwC Junction platform) to better understand the levers that impact the business’s performance and the hypotheses.  

Our FDD team further identified key deal issues that were addressed as part of the Sale and Purchase Agreement (“SPA”) to better protect the interests of our clients.  

Our integrated approach using various PwC specialist teams helped us deliver a sustained outcome to our clients and the town of Ashton. With the successful conclusion of this transaction, around 3,000 jobs have been saved, which adds significant momentum to the economy of the town of Ashton and the Western Cape.