food-beverage

Food & Beverage

The firm acts for leading international and domestic food and beverage companies and provides comprehensive representation in a wide range of areas, including corporate transactions, antitrust and merger structuring, product liability litigation, and the full range of marketing, promotional, labelling and intellectual property issues and regulatory investigations and compliance. Clients include manufacturers, distributors and sellers of food, beverage and nutritional products. The firm provides its clients with a range of services in many areas of the law including food, beverage and nutrition industry-specific issues involving:

  • Corporate finance and M&As;
  • Labor and employment;
  • Labelling and marketing;
  • Intellectual property;
  • Consumer protection;
  • Bankruptcy and insolvency; and
  • Regulatory and compliance matters.

Recent highlights include:

  • Acting for Metaxa on labelling and bottling requirements under EU and Greek law before state authorities and administrative courts.
  • Successfully representing the Greek brewery of Atalanti in a major claim against Anheuser-Busch InBev relating to the termination of a distribution relationship.
  • Advice to Cargill on the regulatory treatment of derivatives in Greece.
  • Representing Absolut on its trademarks filings and compliance in Greece and on claims of goodwill indemnity of local distributors.
  • Acting on the refinancing of a substantial syndicated loan of listed food & beverage company Olympos.

Representative Clients

Metaxa, Absolut Vodka, Cargill, Haagen Dazs, Coca Cola, McCain, Dia, Soya Mills, Loux, Hatziyiannakis, Tyras-Olympos, EZA Brewery, Galaktokomiki.

Chambers Europe 2013 says:

This firm is well reputed for its dispute resolution work. Highlights include … successfully representing the Greek brewery of Atalanti in a claim against Anheuser-Busch InBev relating to the termination of a distribution relationship.

Legal 500 2013 says:

Kelemenis & Co.’s strong regulatory practice recently advised Greek spirits maker, Metaxa, on EU laws regarding labelling and bottling… Clients include Absolut… and Cargill.

World Trademark Review 1000 2011 says:

The IP department of [Kelemenis & Co.] is an adjunct to its established commercial practice and has a rising profile in the Greek market… Its trademark clients include Metaxa.

Legal 500 2009 says:

Kelemenis & Co.– whose regulatory clients say it is “consistently good” – has been retained to advise Coca-Cola on Greek health and safety regulations as set out in domestic legislation aligned with EU law, work that included a review of EU rules related to beverages.

Legal 500 2008 says:

Recent work of the internationally oriented law firm – of which clients say “a particular strength is that they have a good knowledge of the entire south eastern European market” – includes advising the Greece-based Soya Mills Group on its first major investment in Bulgaria.