Keyline Brands, a U.K.-based subsidiary of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. (GCPL), has acquired the Soft & Gentle brand from Colgate-Palmolive.
Without providing details of the transaction, a statement from GCPL said that sales for the Soft & Gentle brand in calendar 2011 were 21 million pounds (around Rs.187 crore). GCPL said the acquisition was being funded by low-cost debt and the impact on GCPL’s consolidated debt/equity ratio is 0.03.
Soft & Gentle is the U.K.’s fourth largest female deodorant brand by market share and has strong brand equity. “The acquisition of Soft & Gentle by Keyline Brands will add profitable scale to our U.K. business,” Adi Godrej Chairman, GCPL, said in a statement.
“Our U.K. business has historically had a higher mix of distributed brands than owned brands. Strategically, we have been working on changing the mix towards owned brands and building more scale in the business. With this acquisition, the salience of owned brands will become greater than that of distributed brands. We expect this acquisition to be accretive in year one,” Mr. Godrej said.
