Two iconic Australian businesses with household brands that have been in the pantries of Australian families for decades are merging, together with the powdered milk business of a third Australian founded business Nature One Dairy to create a market leading Australian food and beverage company with significant scale.

Former Asahi Beverages Group CEO and current SPC Director Robert Iervasi has been appointed the Managing Director of the merged business, which will own and operate three business divisions, namely SPC, The Original Juice Co. and Nature One Dairy.

SPC is an iconic Australian brand and is the largest producer of fruit, tomato, baked beans and spaghetti processing, packaging, and canning in Australia. It holds some of Australia’s most recognisable household food brands such as SPC, Ardmona, Goulburn Valley, ProVital, Pomlife, the Good Meal Co, and Street Eats – feeding Australian families for more than 100 years.

The Original Juice Company is a well-known Australian food processing company specialising in chilled fruit and vegetable juices. Founded in 1988, it has maintained a commitment to sourcing local fruit and producing fresh juice daily for over 30 years. Using a mix of conventional and custom-developed equipment, OJC manufactures high-quality juices, fibres, infused fruits, and fruit waters for both domestic and international markets.

Nature One Dairy is a Singapore registered, Australian-founded dairy company that manufactures and sells premium infant formula, nutritional formula and milk powder products. With an established sales and marketing footprint in Australia, China and other Asia Pacific markets, products are sold under the Nature One Dairy brand. The Nature One Dairy international market presence provides a platform for further inorganic growth for the combined business through product diversification and access to the Asian distribution market.

Together the three businesses create a substantial Australian based and owned global food and beverage companies that will continue to support Australian producers and execute on a global growth strategy.

Further award for Nature MultiPack^™: at this year’s FachPack trade show in Nuremberg, Germany, the KHS Group was presented with the Green Star Packaging Award for its innovative packaging system. Nature MultiPack^™, which holds cans together with dots of adhesive, won in the Product category. The Green Star Packaging Award honors environmentally-friendly packaging and recycling and improvements in operational packaging-related processes. Winners of the prize are entitled to participate in the WorldStar Award.

Sustainability and innovation as goals

The pioneering style of packaging combines innovation and sustainability. The Nature MultiPack^™ marketed by NMP Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of KHS GmbH, groups beverage containers into a stable, easily ‘openable’ or separable pack using dots of adhesive rather than shrink film. In addition to the recent award-winning version for cans, which can be formed into multipacks of 1 x 3, 1 x 4, 2 x 2, 2 x 3 and 2 x 4, PET bottles can also be grouped in this way into packs of 2 x 2 and 2 x 3. A convenient carrying handle, which helps to keep the pack stable, and the individual alignment of the respective containers communicate effective marketing messages. The new packaging has also been designed to withstand transportation and marketing logistics while allowing the consumer to easily remove the individual containers from the multipack.

Materials and energy saved by the Nature MultiPack™

Compared to containers classically packed in film the Nature MultiPack^™ not only saves on packaging materials but also on energy; the KHS packaging system requires up to 85 % less material than the conventional multipack and reduces energy consumption during production by a maximum of 67 %.