A private group, a public partner, and a foreign entity are interested in the heritage of Italian values and savoir faire. We have all we need to judge this operation as one of a very interesting outline: the transfer of the wineries Sella & Mosca and Teruzzi & Puthod to Terra Moretti. To sell, of course, was the Campari Group, who have long sought to get out of the still wine business (Enrico Serafino had already sold for 6 million euro to Americans of Krause Holdings in 2015), and found a counterpart that was interested in making the dimensional shift to better deal with the international challenges in a pivotal Italian agri-food sector, which depends increasingly on its ability to sell abroad. It was bought for 62 million euro by Terra Moretti, known for Bellavista Franciacorta, which was financially supported by Simest group Cassa Depositi e Prestiti and N.u.o. Capital, a Luxembourg company under Italian control – the CEO is Thomas Paoli – with capital investments contributed by a branch of Pao Yue Kong’s family, powerful ship owner of Hong Kong (who died in 1991) with a very diversified string of investments, even geographically. For the Moretti family the cash outlay is approximately 26.8 million euros. T.M. Distribution will continue to administer the distribution of all of the group labels, including Bellavista and the Tuscan wines, Petra and Tenuta La Badiola.
The strategic plan
The strategic plan is to move from the 2016 turnover of 63.2 million euro (41.2 Moretti +22 of the two companies obtained, for a total of 9.62 million bottles) to over 90 million euro in 2021, betting strongly and especially on the (difficult) Chinese market thanks to the new strong partner, hoping it can help restore the competitive disadvantage that Italian wine has compared to French, Chilean, and Australian wines. To be leaders in the world of wine today, as Francesca Moretti, in charge of the wine business in the homonymous family, explained to Food, not just at an Italian level, it is essential to be of a significant size, in addition to the quality and excellence of the product. And with these two acquisitions and the five-year development program that we have planned out, our group counts on achieving it. Thanks to the two acquired companies, the vineyard area owned or under management rose to 1,084 hectares, making the new entity the fourth in the whole of Italy, excluding cooperative groups, which can also count on a first-class tourist accommodation.
