Offering more than 2500 newspapers and magazines and serving 1.5 million active users in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Austria, and Spain

Today is a big win for access to quality content as Cafeyn, the European information streaming champion, acquires Blendle, the Netherlands’ biggest news platform.

Cafeyn’s mission since it launched in 2006, has been giving users across Europe the opportunity to read from their favourite newspapers and magazines on its digital platform.

Ari Assuied, president of the Cafeyn Group comments: “At Cafeyn our ambition is to give everyone unparalleled access to quality content. This acquisition enables us to accelerate our growth. We are very happy to onboard such a talented and passionate team of media experts into our Group”.

Cafeyn, in joining forces with Blendle, is continuing to accelerate its international expansion and product development. Blendle has developed notable product expertise around the article experience including clipping, tags, recommendations and audio, all of which are complementary to the Cafeyn platform. It will mean the Cafeyn Group of companies now offers more than 2500 newspapers and magazines and serves over 1.5 million active users across Europe.

“It has always been our dream to go international with Blendle. After all, making quality journalism accessible to everyone is not only relevant for the Dutch,” says Blendle founder Alexander Klöpping.

The ambition for Cafeyn moving forward is to accelerate expansion throughout Europe and beyond, bringing the best of both companies and apps together into a unified experience.

Ari Assuied “We’re excited for our teams to start exchanging features and experiences and to make our catalogues featuring over 2500 newspapers and magazines available to all. It allows us to become the home of the best pan-European journalism out there”.

The acquisition of Blendle is the second by Cafeyn in as many months following the successful acquisition of miLibris, the technology service provider to publishers that operates in France and Canada, in June this year. Cafeyn’s recent acquisitions are underpinned by strong business growth over the past 3 years across the business, coupled with healthy market growth as the global sales revenues for digital magazines and newspapers have grown 22% CAGR over the past 5 years, according to PwC Digital Market Outlook 2018-2022. The combination of Blendle and miLibris under the Cafeyn umbrella means the company now has an active presence, i.e. employees, in France, UK, Netherlands and Canada.

Since its creation in 2006, LeKiosk’s, now Cafeyn’s, ambition, driven by a deep passion for the media, has been to reconnect readers to the content that is relevant to them, by offering an ultra high-performance platform, based on advanced technology and backed up by a team of more than 90 people. With its expertise and a network of strategic partners, the platform offers hundreds of titles, news and magazines, accessible via mobile app or PC. Cafeyn is available in France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Caribbean and Madagascar and aims to accelerate its international expansion over the next two years. Since its inception 13 years ago, Cafeyn has continued to rapidly innovate the way it promotes information streaming at a time when the industry is reinventing itself and the way the general public consumes information is changing.

Founded in 2014 with its famous ‘pay-per-article’ model Blendle quickly amassed over 1.5 million registered accounts in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the United States. For the majority of its users this was their first time paying for journalism. In 2017 Blendle introduced ‘Blendle Premium’, a subscription service in the Netherlands and Belgium featuring a daily personalized selection of articles based on your reading preferences. With a team of 50 people from their hometown in Utrecht, Netherlands innovative features such as its narration service Blendle Audio and the ability to read unlimited magazines were added.

Press contact:

Alfred London

Kitty.Boyle@Alfredlondon.com

Emily.Levy@Alfredlondon.com

Note: Berlin based IEG (Investment Banking Group) acted as exclusive financial advisor for the shareholders of Blendle in the sale to Cafeyn. Guillaume Bonneton from GP Bullhound Paris acted as exclusive financial advisor to the shareholders of Cafeyn in the acquisition of Blendle.