Foods United acquires majority stake in LikeMeat

19-Feb-2020 - Germany

Foods United Inc. with headquarters in Delaware (USA) has acquired the majority of the capital of LikeMeat GmbH (Düsseldorf) from heristo AG (Bad Rothenfelde).

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LikeMeat is a company founded in 2013 that specialises in the production of vegan meat alternatives. The company is represented in the food retail trade with its fresh products such as plant-based bratwursts, escalopes or gyros strips and also offers a range of products for the food service. A total of around 100 employees work for LikeMeat at the production facility in Oss, the Netherlands, and at the company headquarters in Düsseldorf. Since the beginning of 2017, the company has also been exporting its products to other European countries and the USA, generating sales in the double-digit millions.

Products such as vegetable sausage or nuggets are now becoming increasingly attractive to the mass market of flexitarians thanks to new production technologies and a much more refined taste. Foods United Inc. is developing this product category of plant-based substitutes for poultry and meat through targeted majority investments in emerging brands and is helping plant-based foods of the latest generation to achieve an even better presence in the trade and attractive pricing in a global growth market.

Björn Witte, Board Member of Foods United: "This strategic investment of 51 percent in LikeMeat is a first significant step for us in building a group of companies in the highly dynamic plant-based food sector. We are looking forward to actively supporting the LikeMeat team in the future in product development and marketing.

"This transaction is a strong signal to the market and will transform LikeMeat from a successful start-up to an international company and a global brand," says LikeMeat founder and CEO Timo Recker.

With its investments, Foods United targets the entire value chain: from raw material procurement to production and marketing. This enables an accelerated development of strong brands, high quality standards and a wide range of products for a mass market far beyond the vegan and vegetarian niches. The strategic distribution partner is Green Meadows GmbH, a joint venture of Foods United and the PHW Group, which is a founding member and shareholder of Foods United. The newly founded company Green Meadows is to become the production and distribution arm of Foods United in the European market.

In addition to Kees Kruythoff, Chris Kerr (New Crop Capital), Steven Rapp (Independent), the top-class board of Foods United Inc. also includes the co-founders Roger Lienhard, Björn Witte, Marcus Keitzer (Board Member for Alternative Protein Sources at the PHW Group) and Dr. Thomas Kindler (Secretary)

The controlling shareholder of Foods United, founded in 2019, is Blue Horizon Corporation AG, headquartered in Switzerland.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

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