From five cows in Komani to a ₹131 crore dairy acquisition, the Ken Clark story just got its most Indian chapter yet.
There is a detail buried in Varun Beverages’ latest acquisition announcement that almost every outlet has glossed over, and it changes everything about this story.
The South African dairy company Varun just agreed to buy, Crickley Dairy Proprietary Limited, was built by the same man who built Twizza. Ken Clark is not only the founder and managing director of Twizza Soft Drinks, he is also the founder and owner of Crickley Dairy, with both companies having factories in Queenstown, now known as Komani, in the Eastern Cape. In the space of three months, Varun Beverages’ South African subsidiary Bevco has now effectively acquired the entire Eastern Cape beverage empire that Clark spent four decades building from scratch.
Clark started Crickley Dairy in 1984 with just five cows and a single farmhand. He grew it into a regional institution, then in 2003 used Crickley’s Queenstown site to launch Twizza, a soft drinks brand built on affordable quality that would eventually command three manufacturing plants and a presence across southern Africa. Varun Beverages completed its acquisition of Twizza for ZAR 2,053 million on March 18, 2026, making it a step-down subsidiary. The very next day, the company announced it was buying Crickley Dairy too.
Bevco signed the agreement on March 17, 2026, to acquire a 100% equity stake in Crickley Dairy from Clark Holdings Proprietary Limited, at an enterprise value of ZAR 238 million, approximately US$14.3 million. The transaction remains subject to regulatory clearance, including from the Competition Commission of South Africa.
“This acquisition is in line with the company’s strategy to diversify its product portfolio into new categories viz. value-added dairy and juice-based drinks,” Varun Beverages said in its regulatory filing.
The strategic logic runs deeper than a portfolio footnote. Crickley produces milk, cream, cheese, yoghurt, amasi, juice and drinking yoghurt, all sourced from local Eastern Cape farmers, with products sold nationally at Pick n Pay, Shoprite and Spar. For a company whose revenues are almost entirely tied to PepsiCo’s carbonated lineup, Pepsi, 7UP and Mountain Dew, dairy and juice represent genuinely new ground, and a deliberate hedge against the growing global scrutiny of sugary carbonated drinks. South Africa itself has not been immune to that tension, as Drinkabl.media reported on the country’s advertising watchdog banning a public health ad warning that sugary drinks contribute to obesity and diabetes, a sign of the regulatory undercurrents building in Varun’s key growth market.
Varun Beverages entered South Africa in March 2024 through its acquisition of The Beverage Company, securing the PepsiCo franchise for South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini, with distribution rights extending across Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique and Madagascar. The Twizza acquisition then added three integrated manufacturing plants and a challenger brand with deep township-market penetration. Crickley now adds cold-chain dairy infrastructure and juice production to a portfolio that, just 24 months ago, had no South African presence at all.
Analysts at Emkay Global project that Varun Beverages’ volume market share in South Africa could rise to around 20% by 2027, from roughly 10% previously, driven by Twizza’s manufacturing infrastructure and Bevco’s distribution depth. The Crickley deal adds a dimension those forecasts hadn’t yet priced in.
For the full year ended December 2025, Varun Beverages reported revenue from operations up 8.5% year-on-year, EBITDA rising 7.2%, and net profit after tax up 16.2%. The company also entered an exclusive distribution agreement with Carlsberg Breweries for select African territories and launched Cheetos production in Morocco and Zimbabwe. The balance sheet, analysts note, remains net debt-free, which has clearly emboldened Varun to move fast and move big.
For Ken Clark, the Crickley sale marks the quiet close of a chapter. The sale of both Twizza and Crickley means Clark and his family will no longer hold ownership of either company he built from the 1980s, businesses that have since passed to the second generation of the Clark family. What began with five cows on an Eastern Cape farm now belongs to one of the world’s largest PepsiCo bottlers.
The Crickley deal is pending Competition Commission approval. No completion date has been given.
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