Dutch Bakery, a leading bakery group specialised in home bake-off bread and snack products, agreed to combine with coolback, a leading German bakery group specialised in bake-off bread, to create European Bakery Group, a pan-European bakery platform.  

coolback is an established industrial bakery group operating three state-of-the-art bakeries in Germany. The company produces and sells private label, frozen and ambient bake-off bread products to customers active in food retail and foodservice across Germany, the Nordics and Poland.

By combining Dutch Bakery and coolback, the newly created European Bakery Group will benefit from a complementary product assortment and customer base across Europe. The combination will enable European Bakery Group to capitalise on its capabilities to offer an innovative, high-quality and comprehensive product assortment to its customers, which is produced sustainably and with natural ingredients at its core.

3i is a leading international investment manager focused on mid-market Private Equity and Infrastructure. Its core investment markets are northern Europe and North America.

Houthoff, together with co-counsel Noerr acted as counsel for Dutch Bakery Group, a portfolio company of 3i Group, on the combination with coolback. The Houthoff team was led by Philip van der Eijk and consisted of Jeanne Beck, Gerrit Oosterhuis and Jori de Goffau. The Noerr team was led by Thomas Schulz and Jana Baumann.