Agenda: Valeo Foods valuation seems not as sweet as granny’s larder | Ireland

Marzipan was the icing on the cake. After Christmas, Valeo Foods, the Irish branded food company, swooped to buy Schluckwerder, a seemingly famous German maker of the almond-flavoured gloop. Weeks later, Goldman Sachs is hired to flog Valeo, with reports of a €1.7 billion valuation. Hardly a coincidence.

Valeo has been a personal fascination for some time. It is the granny’s larder of branded food groups: Jacob’s cream crackers, Silvermints, Batchelors beans, Fox’s glacier mints, Matthew Walker Christmas puddings and Shamrock raisins. It has Dip Dabs and Refreshers for the grandchildren. And now, marzipan.

If reports are accurate, Valeo is to be sold for around 1.5 times sales. Even for a company that knows how to put the figs in the fig rolls, that looks