Brown-Forman Corp has reached an agreement to sell its Finlandia vodka brand to Coca-Cola HBC AG for $US220million ($A323m).
Brown-Forman President and CEO, Lawson Whiting, expects the purchase to be finalised in the second half of 2023.
“Finlandia has played an important role in the global growth of Brown-Forman,” he said.
“Since the brand originally joined our portfolio in 2000, many talented individuals have worked hard to bring Finlandia vodka to the world, and I thank them for their dedication.”
Swiss-based Coca-Cola HBC AG operates in 28 countries across three continents and CEO, Zoran Bogdanovic, said Finlandia is a strategic investment given the distribution channels.
“Having been associated with the distribution of Finlandia for 17 years in several markets, we are excited by this unique and regionally relevant opportunity that will support the acceleration of our on-premise business across more of our markets,” he said.
“This unique opportunity for us will support our mixability strategy with our core non-alcoholic RTD portfolio and sharpen our focus on the strategically important on-premise channel.
“We view this as an attractive investment and a natural evolution of our role as one of Finlandia’s distribution partners.”
Brown-Forman previously acquired Finlandia from Altia Corp (predecessor to the current production partner Anora Group Plc), obtaining full ownership in 2004.
Finlandia was established in 1970 and currently has annual production volumes of 2.7 million cases globally.
It is still bottled in Finland and available in both pure and flavoured versions.