Nutreco on Monday announced that it acquired a 51 percent share in a Brazilian fish feed and animal nutrition company.
The new joint venture will be named Fri-Ribe. It consists of two privately owned companies, Fri-Ribe and Dispa, which operate under the Fri-Ribe brand.
With 400 employees and 2008 sales of EUR 47 million (USD 69.5 million), the companies operate five production facilities and six sales offices across central and northeast Brazil. They are major producers of shrimp and tilapia feed and manufacture a variety of other animal feeds.
“This acquisition perfectly fits in our growth strategy to further strengthen our global market positions in feed specialties and fish feed,” said Nutreco Executive VP Frank Tielens.
“Fri-Ribe’s strong management, dedicated people and distribution network offers Nutreco an excellent opportunity for a long-term partnership and brings substantial scope for cross-selling Nutreco’s feed specialties,” he added. “The joint venture also clearly demonstrates our commitment to grow our business in markets with a perspective of structural profitable growth. The animal nutrition market in Brazil is growing at approximately 5 percent a year on average and this acquisition brings Nutreco an excellent platform to facilitate its expansion in Brazil.”
The Dutch company has been growing steadily over the past few years. Since 2006, it has purchased fish-feed and animal-nutrition businesses in Canada, China, Czech Republic, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Nutreco reported sales of EUR 4.9 billion (USD 7.2 billion) in 2008.
