Sara Lee to acquire full ownership of Senseo coffee from Philips

Sara Lee Corp. plans to buy full ownership of the Senseo coffeemaker trademark from partner Royal Philips Electronics NV as the U.S. food producer prepares its coffee business for a spinoff.

Sara Lee will pay Philips $223 million for the 50 percent Philips currently owns in the Senseo trademark and Philips will be the exclusive Senseo coffee machine manufacturer and distributor until 2020, the companies said in joint statement today.

“We are planning to grow the Senseo brand and by owning the brand, we have better opportunities to do it,” Michiel Quarles van Ufford, a spokesman for Sara Lee in Utrecht, Netherlands, said in a phone interview.

Sara Lee Executive Chairman Jan Bennink plans to expand the company's coffee business to rank second in the industry after Kraft Foods Inc. The strategy focuses on the Senseo coffee-pad machine, he said in an interview last year. Bennink has formed a team of Senseo managers dedicated to pushing out new flavors and models. The spinoff is planned for April or May.

Senseo coffee pads compete with Nestle SA's single-serve Nespresso espresso capsules, the Swiss company's fastest-growing business. Amsterdam-based Philips and Downers Grove- based Sara Lee introduced Senseo in 2001 and more than 33 million of the brand's coffee machines have been sold, the companies said today.

Philips rose as much as 0.8 percent to 15.50 euros and was up 0.3 percent at 9:51 a.m. in Amsterdam. That pared the stock's decline this year to 33 percent.