TURNHOUT (Belgium) – Miko N.V., a specialist in coffee service and plastic packaging listed on Euronext Brussels, announces that, through its coffee service division, it has acquired 100% of the shares of the company Smiling Faces AB – a company achieving a turnover in excess of EUR 9 million with 39 employees.
Smiling Faces AB, established in Stockholm, is an innovative Swedish coffee service operator that focuses on the provision of coffee service solutions for large and medium-sized clients in the office coffee service (“OCS”) market segment.
Smiling Faces installs small and medium-sized coffee and vending machines at its clients’ premises in a leasing arrangement, and also takes care of the technical support and supply of all ingredients required (coffee, sugar, milk, tea and hot chocolate).
In addition to coffee, Smiling Faces’ offering also includes the provision of drinking water systems for its clients, as well as healthy snacks in its “Fruit by Smiling Faces” segment.
The company and its personnel provide a strong service component known as Pausmanagement®, being the management of the coffee break. The company presently has a workforce of 39 employees and has seen a successful development over recent years, currently achieving a turnover in excess of EUR 9 million.
Over the past three years, the Miko Group’s coffee service division has decided to turn its strategic focus to Scandinavia in view of the strong coffee culture in that region and the economic strength of these countries. Since the initial decision, acquisitions have been made in Denmark (Copenhagen), Norway (Oslo) and Sweden (Gothenburg).
Frans Van Tilborg (Miko Group CEO) says: “It is with great pride that we are announcing today that we are welcoming the Smiling Faces team in our group, thereby further strengthening our presence in Scandinavia. In Sweden, we already established a strong basis in Gothenburg and Malmö through our subsidiary Kaffekompaniet AB. However, the Stockholm region has remained somewhat virgin territory up until now. By incorporating Smiling Faces into our group, we can now add this region to Miko’s map. In addition, it will undoubtedly be possible to achieve synergies between both our Swedish subsidiaries.”
The acquisition is in line with the group’s long-term strategy to continue to roll out an international coffee service organisation through its own subsidiaries in various countries. Currently, the group’s European home countries are: Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
About Miko
Miko has been active in coffee service for over 200 years and in plastic packaging for some 40 years now, and was floated on Euronext Brussels in 1998. Miko follows a “two-pillar strategy” in which its core activities – coffee service and plastic packaging – are practically independent entities with their own management, so that each activity can follow its own growth path. The Group, with its 985 employees, posted a turnover of EUR 178 million in 2015, with the coffee service and plastics processing division each accounting for half of this figure.
Miko is an international group with companies in Belgium, France, UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Indonesia and Australia.
