Vasari Beverages to expand African brewing capacity

Vasari is a leading frontier and emerging markets alcoholic beverage investor and RMB, a leading pan-African investment bank, acted as sole mandated lead arranger and funder for the latest deal.

Led by Vivian Imerman, Vasari has more than 40 years’ experience operating market-leading consumer goods companies across emerging and developed markets including Scottish distiller Whyte & Mackay.

“Over the past six years we have been involved in the deployment of more than US$250m in capital investment to develop our frontier and emerging markets beverage strategy,” said Imerman.

“Vasari Beverages has a highly activist investment approach and seeks to build long term sustainable value. This capital injection is a step forward in pursuing our investment strategy across compelling opportunities in our target regions.”

Vasari owns 98% of the controlling offshore company of Dashen Brewery, one of Ethiopia’s largest breweries, which will use some of the capital raised by Vasari to double total production capacity to 5m hectolitres.