'Nathan' drops into history

Photo / Brett Phibbs

The renaming of Lion Nathan National Foods is the next step in the integration of Australasia's largest food and beverage company, the firm says.

The company announced this week that it would be renamed Lion, with the formal rollout of the new corporate brand taking place later this year.

Lion Nathan National Foods was formed after Japanese company Kirin assumed 100 per cent ownership of New Zealand brewing firm Lion Nathan in 2009.

That company was then merged with Australia's National Foods, which Kirin had owned since 2007.

Neil Hinton, Lion's Auckland-based corporate affairs director, said the new name aligned the firm under "one badge".

Nathan - a name long linked with brewing in this country - looks set to be committed to the annals of history.

Lion Nathan was formed in 1988 through the merger of L.D. Nathan & Co, and Lion Breweries. The merged company was listed on the NZX until Kirin's takeover in 2009.

Hinton said the inclusion of "Nathan" and "National Foods" in the firm's previous name "talked about our history rather than our future".

"There's some sentimentality - particularly in the New Zealand market - about losing the word 'Nathan'," he said. "While you don't want to ever forget where you've come from, for us going forward as one business [the name change] was about uniting under one name that meant the same to everybody."

Hinton said there had been former L.D. Nathan shareholders who had held Lion Nathan shares right through to the Kirin takeover.

"We were sensitive about that, but given [the takeover] was more than 18 months ago we thought it was an opportunity [to rename] now because those shareholders are no longer shareholders."

Lion acting managing director Rory Glass said the Nathan name had a strong and proud history in New Zealand business over the past 160 years.