An Italian project, which started just five years ago, has already landed on the radar of an important investment fund such as Mandarin Capital Partners III. The story is that of Daroma Caffè, an initiative launched with the aim of creating the most important coffee roasting company in Italy: now the result seems even more realistic, after the Chinese private equity
has acquired a majority stake in the capital of Daroma SpA
Thanks to this operation Daroma makes its debut on the market with consolidated revenues of approx 60 million euro and aspires to new and future acquisitions in the sector, undertaking to concentrate the roasting and packaging of coffee at the Castel Maggiore (BO) site and the production of single portions at the Thiene (VI) site.
Daroma is present today mainly in Lazio, Emilia-Romagna and Sardinia. “The rest of Italy will be included in a five-year project,” adds CEO Giulio Santin, explaining the choice to grow through acquisitions. “It's the most natural process and one that causes the least jolts in the growth process. You buy and the acquired company becomes an integrated part of a natural process where the sellers follow and monitor each phase, guaranteeing continuity of product and service to customers”.
The group's commitment is therefore to consolidate and increase, in addition to the leading sectors, the foreign market, spreading the brands on an international scale. And it is precisely internationalization that is in Mandarin's DNA: "We will support Daroma in penetrating foreign markets, leveraging the growing appeal of Italian coffee abroad, and the international presence of our fund in Germany, Asia and the United States". explained the MCP partner Alberto Camaggi.
The coffee sector has many of the characteristics appreciated by Mandarin, as Camaggi underlined: “The stable demand, not influenced by the economic cycles, the significant growth potential for those who are able to propose dynamic and innovative business models and the strong tradition of made in Italy, with the "Italian-style" espresso coffee is increasingly appreciated even globally, prompted us to choose this sector and in particular Daroma, a group in which we have found the brands and quality consistent with our project".
The Daroma project was born from the aspiration of Eng. Giulio Santin, owner of the Encon group, the holding company that owns, among other companies, Soimar Group SpA, a multidisciplinary engineering company specializing in turnkey plants, which ranges from the pharmaceutical to robotics sectors. In 2015 Santin decided to plant the first seed of this ambitious and important project: the acquisition of Torrefazione Parenti in Bologna, a small industrial reality operating at a local level with a high quality product and with the Mexico and Giovannini brands (historic brand of the Romagna area since 1926) .
The Encon group's project is to bring together brands already rooted in the various areas of the national territory, so as to be able to quickly become "DAROMA coffee, the coffee of Italy". In the years after 2016 the growth continues through the acquisition of the company that owns other brands such as Nori, Camilloni, Van Doren and the most famous nationally, the Palombini brand, the first café in the capital, with over 1400 bars within the perimeter of the ring road, recognized as "the café of Rome". This is the main springboard for future development, which allows Daroma to develop progressively, enhancing the Ho.Re.Ca and GDO sectors.
This important progress has therefore aroused the attention of institutional investors who have seen the opportunity to invest to accelerate this expansion process. Daroma's choice today fell on the MCP (Mandarin Capital Investment) fund which, among all the contacts it had, represented the best offer in terms of investment prospects, corroborated by the immediate acquisition, following the closing, of two other companies that will be part of the Coffee Holding group: Nero Nobile, leader in the production of coffee and soluble products in capsules and a company operating in the online sale of coffee in grains and single portion.
