NewAge Inc (fka NBEVQ) (NBEVQ)

[Roland Rick Perry]

Giants on the Hunt.

They're buying and investing in the smaller guys.

The hurt is accelerating for big CPG. Every single one of the largest eight food and beverage companies had U.S. sales declines in Q1 2016 vs. 2015. This is the “Who’s Who”: Nestle. PepsiCo. Unilever. AB Inbev. Coca-Cola. Tyson. Mondelez. Danone. Together, the sales of this group in this short time period — just one quarter — declined a whopping six percent, or $5.5 billion.

To put this in perspective, in all of 2015, the top five largest CPGs lost $13 billion in sales. Which was already pretty darn bad. But it looks even worse because all this decline is happening while spending on food and beverage is increasing.

The winners here were the little guys. Almost half of that $22 billion went to small ($100 million to $1 billion in IRI-measured sales) and mid-size companies ($1 billion to $5 billion).

Another accelerating trend is large CPGs investing in smaller companies. This, too seems to be happening more than ever before, in many different ways. Some large CPGs have created visible (branded) investment arms (like Kellogg’s 1894 Ventures, General Mills’ 301 Inc., and Coca-Cola’s Venturing and Emerging Brands group). Others have created funds run by people outside of the CPG space, like Mars’ Digitalis Ventures and Campbell’s Acre Venture Partners.

Full article: http://www.bevnet.com/news/2016/nosh-voices-pressure-heres-big-cpgs-will