Nestlé has agreed a deal to acquire UK based recipe kit firm, SimplyCook, in an effort to increase its direct-to-customer offerings in the UK and Ireland.

SimplyCook was launched in 2014 and provides customers with pre-portioned ingredients to follow recipes. According to the firm, the business has helped households across the UK to cook more than 20 million recipes.

Stefano Agostini, CEO for Nestlé UK & Ireland said “I am delighted to welcome the SimplyCook team to Nestlé. We share an ambition to make cooking more accessible by offering delicious, nutritious and convenient solutions. This is an ideal partnership for both parties as Nestlé continues to transform its portfolio and SimplyCook accelerates its growth.”

“There is a growing demand for great tasting, nutritionally balanced food and this move underlines our focus on investing in businesses with attractive growth prospects and acting on current trends.”

Oli Ashness, chief executive officer of SimplyCook, said: “At SimplyCook we’ve always been focused on our long-standing mission to bring joy to tens of millions of meal times around the world through fantastic flavour and our simple recipes.

“The more we got talking to Nestlé the more we realised that our ambitions and vision for the business aligned with what Nestlé sees as the right path for the SimplyCook business. Nestlé’s experience, operational expertise, and international know-how gives us the opportunity to expand further in the UK and beyond, making cooking more accessible for millions more consumers in far less time than we previously imagined.

“We already have a great team with a very diverse set of skills which will continue to run the business with the same entrepreneurial spirit and data-driven approach, putting the consumer at the centre of everything we do, and I look forward to seeing what the team can deliver going forward with some exciting doors now opened to us.”