Our Client, a consumer-focused private equity firm, engaged us to perform a fast audit on the procurement process for a number of beef cuts and provide a point of view of certain operational considerations of their target, as part of their pre-acquisition due diligence.

EP deployed 3 senior practitioners who worked together with client’s team over a period of 1.5 weeks to deliver the results that included:

• Data audit: We analysed the information available in the Data Room: contracts, historic, present, and budgeted P&L’s, and financial costing model among the most important, and identified key complementary information and questions to bring deeper insights
• Interviews with potential alternative suppliers to gather insights on the price and alternative specifications for the main cuts procured
• Soft market consultation that provided benchmark pricing on the primary and secondary cuts procured
• 2024 domestic market outlook so that the Fund could refine their financial models
• Deep dive on one potential international market

Based on the above approach, we framed a point of view on the possibility of realizing significant savings by sourcing internationally and by testing alternative cuts domestically sourced. Our output was leveraged by the deal team to refine their bid for the target.