Beverage and snack giant PepsiCo has agreed to buy Israeli company SodaStream in a deal worth $3.2 billion. SodaStream makes home beverage carbonation systems sold in 46 countries.
Pepsi’s incoming CEO, Ramon Laguarta, said the acquisition reflects the company’s campaign to find new ways to reach consumers “beyond the bottle” as well as its growing emphasis on sparkling water.
“SodaStream is highly complementary and incremental to our business, adding to our growing water portfolio, while catalyzing our ability to offer personalized in-home beverage solutions around the world,” said Laguarta.
SodaStream just experienced its most successful quarterly period in the company’s history, according to a statement from Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of SodaStream since 2007.
“Most notably, sales of sparkling water maker units increased 22% to over 1 million in the second quarter and sales of gas refill units grew 17% to an all-time record 9.7 million,” Birnbaum said.
Most SodaStream customers today are using their countertop machines to prepare liter bottles of plain sparkling water, making the Israeli company the largest sparkling water brand in the world by volume.
US-based PepsiCo, which has a distribution network in 200 countries, is the largest food and beverage business in the United States, Russia, India and the Middle East.
The lucrative deal, expected to close in January upon agreement of PepsiCo shareholders, is the third-largest acquisition of an Israeli company announced this year.
In March, Israeli firm Orbotech was acquired by California’s KLA-Tencor Corporation in a transaction with an equity value of approximately $3.4 billion. In May, International Flavors & Fragrances of New York agreed to buy Haifa-headquartered fragrance and flavor multinational Frutarom in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at approximately $7.1 billion.
The biggest corporate acquisition in Israeli history was Intel’s buyout of Mobileye for $15.3 billion in 2017.