Bright Food Group has denied a report that is it planning to invest in the Australian wine sector.
Bright Food has already shown an interest in acquisitions in Australia’s food industry, and a senior executive of Bright Dairy and Food Co., Ltd, the group’s diary product subsidiary, was quoted by The Australian as saying the parent company is also ‘interested in other products like wine’.
The Shanghai-based company has been speculated to be a potential buyer of the Penfolds owner Treasury Wine Estates several times in the past few years.
A spokesperson from the company’s PR department told DecanterChina.com that the latest news report is ‘not true’.
The share price of Bright Dairy & Food has seen continuous decline in the past six months. And credit rating agency Moody’s has recently changed the rating outlook of Bright Food from stable to negative.
Moody’s said its downgrade was because of the group’s relatively high debt level, and noted its ‘debt leverage of around 7.9x is high when compared to most Baa3-rated peers’.
Bright Food already imports two Australian red wines through an Australian food enterprise Manassen Foods, in which it acquired a 75% stake in 2011.
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