Market expansion, page-70

Maggie Beer Products is, of course, currently a profitable business. That was before any synergies started to kick in from full ownership, which is only a few months old. SKU rationalisation was flagged in the recent presentation. I disagree on your mispricing comment. Everyone seems to have forgotten that ALL the brands in the Longtable Group are pitched at the PREMIUM end of the market. No one is trying to compete with cheap products here (although MBP can, and does, do generics). Since Woolworths recently stated that the new Maggie Beer ash brie cheese was performing above expectations, the pricing appears correct for the market it is targeting. Clearly, Longtable sees a bright future for the brand, else it wouldn't have purchased the remaining 52%. Since the ink is barely dry on the full takeover, I don't think it is either fair or accurate to say "nothing happened" in terms of taking MBP to the next level. Change takes longer than a couple of months to flow through.