Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has shown his support for Bega Cheese’s $460million acquisition of Vegemite, and other brands, by buying up $250,000 worth of shares.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
“You need to have wealth creation staying in Australia, it just makes you poorer otherwise,” the 72-year-old former Australian of the year said.
The vocal critic of the yeast spread’s foreign ownership first set his eyes on the brand after discovering at the time it was owned by the tobacco company Phillip Morris.
“I wrote to Kraft to see if they would sell it to me and I couldn’t get an answer, so then in secret I got a number of leading business people in Sydney from big public companies to ask Kraft if they would be interested in selling it because I thought we could float a separate company owning Vegemite,” he said.
“Once again they never got any form of answer at all.”
He backed the Bega Cheese move to diversify their business.
“Golden Circle went broke as a co-op, and the only reason Bega is still going is that it’s tried to get into the commercial side, but it is still going to be tough for it to compete with the huge, ruthless multinationals,” he said.
“The thing with globalisation is it’s very hard for Australian processors to compete, which is why I’m pleasantly amazed Bega is still operating and making a dollar.”
He said products sold on Australian supermarket shelves should be labeled with their country of ownership to help shoppers make educated purchases.
Mr Smith said he recently met with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, after saying in December 2016 he would help advise her.
“The Greens, Labor and Liberals are all for globalisation, and basically selling everything off, and it’s really only Pauline Hanson who has a policy to stop doing that,” he said.
“If we sell off good companies like Arnott’s, Aeroplane Jelly and Red Head matches it means overseas countries become wealthier and we become poorer.
“So many people are saying that they don’t want this extreme globalisation.”