Privately-owned yoghurt specialist Muller already leads the UK market in that sector and will pay £280m ($NZ540) for Wiseman which supplies nearly a third of the fresh milk market.
Muller's bid of £3.90/share for Wiseman came to light when RWD shares surged on the London sharemarket earlier this month. The shares were £5/share in 2010 but a profits warning prompted by supermarket price wars on fresh milk saw the stock crash to just above £3/share in September that year, where it more or less held until the last quarter of 2011 when it slid to £2.50/share.
RWD has recommended shareholders accept Muller's offer and several large Wiseman stockholders, including some founding family members, are reported to have done so. However, as Dairy News goes to press, there are no reports Muller has secured the 75% of Wiseman stock necessary to delist the company from the London Stock Exchange.
UK producer body DairyCo says if the deal goes through, Muller will process about 19% of Britain's milk output, based on 2010/2011 figures. RWD has contracts with most of the major retailers for own-label milk, a sector where processor margins have been squeezed, it adds.
Bavarian-based Muller was formed in 1947 and is privately owned. While the group's core business is dairy, it is involved in other food sectors in Europe.
According to its website Muller companies employ about 16,000 and, before the Wiseman takeover, had an annual turnover of about Euro 3.5billion ($NZ5.65 billion).
Wiseman was established in 1947 as a small milk run from the family farm in East Kilbride. The London Stock Exchange lists Wiseman's revenue for the year to April 2011 at £917m returning a profit of £34.4m.
