Wide Open Agriculture confirmed that selling its retail brand Dirty Clean Food is one of the options it is considering to drive shareholder value. The ASX-listed regenerative ag and food company made the statement following media reports it had hired PKF Australia to find a buyer.
Following The Australian Financial Review’s article on 14 February, WOA went into a trading halt before releasing a response to the piece.
Selling its Dirty Clean Food brand was just one option the company was considering, WOA said in a statement to the ASX.
“The Company wishes to clarify that this process is ongoing and that initial discussions remain confidential in nature and are not yet at a stage that could be considered complete or warrant further disclosure. The Company will continue to keep the market fully informed regarding this process and hopes to be in a position to update the market shortly,” it said.
In its quarterly update on 30 January, WOA said its lupin business offered the greatest potential for a “step change” in returns, so that was where the company was going to focus its cash resources.
WOA is considering closure, restructuring, progress into profitability, sell a minority or majority stake, or the outright sale of DCF. It expects to provide a market update in Q3.
In 2021, WOA’s DCF OutUp was one of a handful of Australian made oat milks, and the only brand with carbon neutral certification from Climate Active. By the end of the year it had raised $20 million through institutional investors to build Western Australia’s first oat milk manufacturing plant.
In the same year, the company started to build a pilot plant to refine the lupin production process near its DCF facility in Kewdale, Western Australia.
By March 2023, WOA CEO Jay Albany said its lupin protein – Buntine Protein was being well received in the market because of its unique benefits for food manufacturers.
In fact, 2023 was a busy year for the company. It secured distributors for Buntine in APAC and the US, signed a non-binding MOU with Saputo Dairy Australia to use one of its manufacturing sites to produce commercial quantities of the protein, and then really ramped things up with its acquisition of European lupin producer, Prolupin. It ended the year by launching its first subsidiary, WOA Germany, and selling and delivering its first order of lupin protein isolate.
