Chinese GP leads €214m round for Meridian-backed Food Union

The injection of fresh capital will be used to support Food Union's ongoing expansion in China, where the company is already in the process of building two dairy plants, having launched regular exports to the republic in September 2016.

Of the €214m total investment, PAG will provide €161.6m and Meridian will inject an additional €52.4m.

The investment follows heavy investment by the Latvian dairy in 2016, which saw it acquire ice-cream producers in Romania and Norway. In 2015, the company acquired Danish ice-cream producer Premier Is from Copenhagen-based small-cap GP Erhvervsinvest.

Food Union also acquired Latvian dairy group Rigas Piensaimnieks from Darby Private Equity's Darby Converging Europe Mezzanine Fund in 2015.

Previous funding
Private equity group Meridian first invested in Food Union in 2013.

Company
Headquartered in Riga, Food Union is a producer of dairy and ice-cream products.

The company operates across nine countries, including the Baltic and Nordic countries. It currently employs a staff of 2,500 and has a history stretching back to the founding of the Latvian Vakmiera dairy cooperative in 1909.

People
PAG – Weijian Shan (chair, CEO).
Meridian Capital – Askar Alshinbayev (managing partner).
Food Union Group – Andrey Beskhmelnitskiy (founder, CEO).

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• Topics
• Expansion
• CEE
• Consumer
• Latvia