Brazil | COMPANIES | FOOD

JBS buys Dutch company Vivera

Betting on plant-based “meat”

JBS has acquired the Netherlands-based company Vivera, Europe’s third largest food producer, to gain a solid footing in the plant-based “meat” market.

Gerardo Iglesias

The acquisition, announced on Monday, April 19, and valued at around US$ 408 million, will enable the Brazilian company, the world’s leading meat producer, to expand its presence in 25 countries, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

According to the press release by JBS, the two companies will jointly produce goods that they will then market separately to consumers in North and South America.

JBS thus continues in the footsteps of other Brazilian multinational corporations, such as Marfrig, which last year signed a joint venture agreement with ADM PlantPlus Foods to manufacture and sell vegetable “meat” and other plant-based products in North and South America.

Marfrig, the world’s leading hamburger producer, controls 70 percent of that joint venture and PlantPlus Foods’ production and distribution centers in the Brazilian city of Várzea Grande (Mato Grosso) and the U.S. state of Ohio.

At the time, executives of the two companies declared that they were investing on “building a leading position in rapid-growth areas, such as the alternative protein segment.”

JBS is taking that same path.