Israel’s Frutarom acquires major shares in Nutrafur

Israel-based flavours and specialty fine ingredients provider Frutarom Industries has acquired 79% of the shares in Spanish company Nutrafur for $14.5m.

Nutrafur operates the research and development, manufacture, and sales and marketing of specialty natural plant extracts bearing antioxidant properties or scientifically proven healthy qualities.

Frutarom Group president and CEO Ori Yehudai said: "The acquisition of Nutrafur is our tenth acquisition since the beginning of the year, and we are working on identifying and executing further strategic acquisitions.

"We will continue implementing our rapid growth strategy, which is based on combining profitable internal growth with strategic acquisitions in order to achieve the goals we recently set for ourselves; sales reaching at least $ 1.5bn with an EBITDA margin of over 22% for our core activities by the year 2020."

The Spanish firm reported sales of around $13m for the 12-month period ending June 2015. The value of Nutrafur’s net assets on a cash-free debt-free basis was approximately $11.4m.

Nutrafur has experience in extracting active components from vegetation, particularly rosemary, olive and citrus.

The new development will help Frutarom to expand its portfolio of natural ingredient solutions.

In addition, Nutrafur’s expertise in the field of antioxidants, particularly in the area of food preservation and protection, and of extending the shelf-life of products, will support Frutarom’s latest acquisitions in the field.

Frutarom offers more than 43,000 products in the flavours and fine ingredients markets of over 150 countries.