{"id":40381,"date":"2026-03-28T10:54:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/40381\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T10:54:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:54:55","slug":"nestle-presses-on-with-water-stake-sale-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/40381\/","title":{"rendered":"Nestl\u00e9 \u2018presses on with water stake sale\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nestl\u00e9 has reportedly taken another step forward with the sale of a stake in its waters business, with several private-equity firms said to have moved to the next stage of bidding.<\/p>\n

People familiar with the matter told The Financial Times that PAI, KKR and CD&R have moved to the next round in bidding for a 50% stake in the waters unit which owns brands like San Pellegrino.<\/p>\n

Platinum Equity has also reportedly “shown interest” in the stake sale which is said to value the waters business at \u20ac5bn ($5.8bn).<\/p>\n

According to The Financial Times, Nestl\u00e9 has been working with investment bankers to explore a stake sale in its waters business.<\/p>\n

Nestl\u00e9 declined to comment on the matter when approached by Just Drinks.<\/p>\n

CD&R and PAI also declined to comment, while KKR and Platinum Equity had not responded to this publication at the time of writing.<\/p>\n

In January<\/a>, a report from Bloomberg indicated the Swiss food and drink giant was reportedly making headway with a process to sell the water business stake.<\/p>\n

People familiar with the issue then told the publication that Nestl\u00e9 was asking potential buyers to put forward first-round bids for the shareholding that month.<\/p>\n

The Acqua Panna water producer declined to comment on the story when approached by Just Drinks at the time.<\/p>\n

Reports from Bloomberg in March last year suggested private-equity players including Blackstone, KKR, Bain Capital, Clayton Dubilier & Rice and PAI Partners were mulling over bids for the water unit.<\/p>\n

According to the publication, the Swiss multinational had hired Rothschild & Co. to assist with the sale. The bank also declined to comment on the matter when approached by Just Drinks in January.<\/p>\n

Nestl\u00e9 is undergoing plenty of changes at the moment since Phillip Navratil took on the CEO role in September.<\/p>\n

In October, he laid out a plan to cut 16,000 jobs across the business over the next two years.<\/p>\n

The reductions will affect 12,000 white-collar workers across the group, and 4,000 in manufacturing and within the supply chain.<\/p>\n

The announcement was made alongside the group’s nine-month results presentation at the time, and looks to boost annual savings to SFr1bn by the end of 2027, up from a previous target of SFr500m as part of the so-called fuel-for-growth strategy already in place at Nestl\u00e9.<\/p>\n

In it annual results in February<\/a>, the group also announced a rejig of the company’s structure around four focus areas: coffee, pet food, nutrition, and food and snacks.<\/p>\n

It also revealed plans to exit the remaining ice-cream business that do not sit within its Froneri joint venture with private-equity firm PAI Partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nestl\u00e9 has reportedly taken another step forward with the sale of a stake in its waters business, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[23571,199,2045,23570,4700,2294],"class_list":{"0":"post-40381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nestle","8":"tag-kkr","9":"tag-nestle","10":"tag-pai-partners","11":"tag-platinum-equity","12":"tag-sale","13":"tag-water-unit"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116306439225185680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}