Ausnutria completes acquisition of Amalthea and DPC

This was reported by Ausnutria on the company's website in Hong Kong. In October 2022, the infant nutrition manufacturer acquired a 50% stake in the Amalthea Group, which was purchased by Joop de Groot in 2014 (partly) from the ZLTO. Ausnutria paid €18,4 million for this stake. Part of the agreement was a put option, whereby De Groot could also sell the remaining stake in Amalthea, plus that of the Dairy Protein Corporation (DPC), to Ausnutria at a later date. This happened last year. Ausnutria paid €22,1 million for the remainder of the shares in Amalthea.

The acquisition of this interest and of DPC, which has a strong position for Ausnutria on the Dutch goat milk market, required approval from the competition authority ACM. 

DPC and CleardMilk
The acquisition price of the remaining 50% in the DPC was initially not disclosed, but now appears to have been set at €1. This seems a symbolic amount, but according to shareholder and executive director Bart van der Meer of Ausnutria, various costs have been included in it.

DPC has a patented technique for microfiltration of goat milk. This is called the CleardMilk formula and it enables optimum valorisation of all individual milk components in semi-finished and end products, particularly for infant nutrition.

Yili contracts less
Ausnutria and major shareholder Yili have also renewed the mutual processing agreement. This applies for a period of three years each time. In the period from 2022 to 2024, Yili was able to have tens of millions of euros worth of goat milk products produced by Ausnutria annually, but in practice it made little use of this, partly because sales of infant nutrition were under pressure in China. In the new agreement from 2025 to 2027, much less processing capacity has therefore been contracted, sometimes with only a third or a quarter of the previous volume.