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A Maltese Hedge Fund Saved The Famous Pandoro Just In Time For Christmas

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The Melegatti company of Verona, Italy has been producing it’s traditional pandoro bread since Domenico Melegatti patented the recipe on October 14th 1894. Since then, the traditional sweet yeast bread has become synonymous with Christmas.

But earlier this year in November, the 123 year old company was tethering on the brink, with management constantly feuding with workers, leaving their salaries unpaid for months. Smelling their competitor’s desperation, other Italian confectionery heavyweights like Motta and Alemanga – both now part of Bauli – attempted to carve out a greater share of the Christmas confectionery market, by pumping out more of their also-iconic Panettones. 

Pandoro

The company’s giant kneading machine, capable of producing 610 kilograms of dough in a single batch was eerily quiet, and workers’ futures looked dire in the month before Christmas. Then, salvation came, through the Maltese hedge fund Abalone Asset Management, which agreed to invest 16 million euros, 6 million of which upfront, financing the immediate production of around 1.5 million pandoro’s.

Covered prolifically in Italian media last month, headlines ranged from Rai’s relatively sober declaration of a ‘Maltese fund being found’ to full ‘saviour’ status in Il Gazzettino. The New York Times also ran a full feature on the story 2 days ago.

Pandoroheadlines

The last of the pandoro’s rolled out of the factory late last week, hitting the shops just in time for a late Christmas gift. Pandoros feature a sweetened yeast dough, not that different from bread dough. It’s then enriched with butter and a host of Melegatti’s secret flavourings, including the iconic vanilla scented icing sugar.

Ironically, this icing sugar has been problematic for the company as it tried to carve out a niche in the American market. Consumers in the United States have been paranoid about any white powder since the 2001 anthrax attacks. This, combined with unfamiliarity with the Italian confectionaries, meant that the company made little inroads in the American market, despite investing a huge amount of effort and resources.

Abalone Asset Management was founded in 2015 and is based in Pieta, employing around 10 people. MaltaToday reported that the company was “quite proud to have been able to save such a prominent brand and product.”

Melegatti

Melegatti employs around 70 full time workers, but 250 part time workers, who come in predominantly before Christmas and Easter. While Pandoro is the traditional confection for Christmas, Melegatti produces the dove shaped Colomba di Pasqua for Easter, a recipe ironically developed by their competitor Angelo Motta, whose company is now part of the Bauli empire.

Usually, Melegatti starts production of it’s Easter confectionaries early into the new year. Whether this will be the case remains to be seen, but for the time being at least, pandoro’s will be in Christmas hampers all around Malta and Italy. 

Colomba

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