Private equity firm takes stake in My Food Bag

Food Bag team (from left) Cecilia Robinson, James Robinson, Kevin Roberts, Nadia Lim, Theresa Gattung and Carlos Bagrie.

My Food Bag the grocery delivery service - founded by reality tv star Nadia Lim, former Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung and Cecilia and James Robinson - has been partly sold to private equity group Waterman Capital.

My Food Bag delivers a week's worth of recipes and ingredients throughout New Zealand and in Sydney and Melbourne.

Speculation earlier this week of a full sale valued the company at $80 million.

Co-founder Cecilia Robinson described the deal as a partnership.

As both companies were private no details on the size or value of the stake would be released, she said.

Waterman was investing in the existing in on the basis of My Food Bag's existing strategy to head for a market listing within three years.

The service has more than 50,000 active customers across New Zealand and Australia but under changes announced today it will withdraw from the Australian market to focus on NZ.

The only major strategic change was that the company was pulling out of Australia to focus on expanding local operations.

Otherwise it would be business as usual Robinson said.

The company, in May, was seeking expressions of interest from equity investors as it reviewed its capital structure.

At that time, Robinson said the company had received a number of unsolicited approaches and had asked PwC to manage approaches with investors both in New Zealand and overseas.

Waterman Capital is an Auckland based private equity firm with $300 million of funds under management.

It has investments in companies like insurer Partners Life, paint shop Guthrie Bowrona and several others in sectors like healthcare, education, freight and logistics.