Carlyle buys Hardy’s wine owner Accolade in $1bn deal

US private equity giant Carlyle has bought Australia’s Accolade Wine, owner of brands such as Hardy’s, for one billion Australian dollars (£550m).

Accolade Wine was owned by Australian private equity firm Champ Private Equity, which created Accolade in 2011 after buying two wine businesses from Constellation Brands for £159m.

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Constellation retained a 20 per cent stake in Accolade which it has agreed to sell to Carlyle.

Accolade owns mass-market wine brand such as Hardy’s, Kumala, Banrock Station, Echo Falls, Stone’s Ginger Wine and Babycham.

The company’s growth has been driven in recent years by strong demand from China, where the country’s growing middle classes have an increasing taste for wine.

Australian wine sales to China hit 848m Australian dollars (£464m) in 2017, having grown markedly since a trade deal between the two countries in 2015 slashed the duty on wine imports from Australia to about three per cent.

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Carlyle said in a statement: “This is a company with great brands and strong market positions, with multiple growth opportunities, particularly in Asian markets.”

Champ had previously planned to float Accolade but cancelled plans following the UK’s Brexit vote and instead increasingly focused its business on Asia.