US-based organic and natural products firm New Age Beverages has completed the purchase of New York-based marketing, sales, and distribution company Brands Within Reach (BWR).

BWR holds the licensing or distribution rights for beverage brands such as Nestea, Illy Ready-to-Drink Coffee, Volvic and Evian.

In addition to beverages, BWR owns key licensing and distribution rights of select natural and organic snack products such as Nature Addicts, Grand-Mere, Lucien Georgelin and La Mere Poulard.

The acquisition was first announced last month. It is expected to significantly increase New Age’s sales and marketing, supply chain, and distribution footprints in North America.

New Age Beverages CEO Brent Willis said: “We have been extremely busy integrating BWR and New Age.

“We have already integrated our sales and marketing organizations, have brought all our shared services functions to bear to benefit BWR, and are now harmonising our operational footprint and supply chain.

“The process has gone extremely smoothly, and we are excited about the potential that the BWR brands represent in a number of our markets and channels, beyond just traditional retail.”

The consideration of $2.5m for the transaction was used to eliminate 100% of BWR’s debt, plus a $500,000 payment to the sellers.

Going further, BWR will be integrated into New Age, and a new North American operations location will be established in New York at BWR’s existing offices.

New Age Beverages will continue to be headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with major operations in Shanghai, Tokyo, Taipei, Stockholm, Munich, and Utah.

Last December, New Age Beverages agreed to acquire Morinda for $85m to increase the footprint of its health sciences products and cannabidiol (CBD) infused beverages.

Morinda sells its products in more than 60 countries and its direct-to-consumer and online businesses have a network of more than 160,000 distributors worldwide. It has manufacturing plants in Tahiti, Germany, Japan, the US, and China.