Munich, Frank­furt a. Main - Upfield Group B.V. has acqui­red Arivia S.A., a leading and inter­na­tio­nally active manu­fac­tu­rer of vegan cheese and owner of the VIOLIFE brand. Upfield Group B.V. was advi­sed by the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust autho­ri­ties and the usual closing condi­ti­ons. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The Upfield Group is the marga­rine and spreads busi­ness spun off from the Dutch-British food group Unile­ver, which was acqui­red by finan­cial inves­tor KKR for EUR 6.83 billion at the end of 2017. The store includes tradi­tio­nal brands such as Rama, Becel, Lätta and Flora. The stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion of Arivia allows Upfield to enter a new busi­ness segment.

The Weil team for this tran­sac­tion was led by Munich Corpo­rate Part­ner Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and included part­ners Tobias Geer­ling (Tax, Munich), Dr. Barbara Jagers­ber­ger (Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Kamyar Abrar (Anti­trust, Frank­furt) and Britta Grauke (Liti­ga­tion, Frank­furt) as well as asso­cia­tes Manuel-Peter Fringer, Alex­an­der Pfef­fer­ler, Caro­lin Ober­maier, Ramona Fren­zel, Marcel Ander­sen (all Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Ansgar Wimber, Julian Schwa­ne­beck, Thomas Weise, Aurel Hille, Kai Neumann (all Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Benja­min Rapp, Dennis Reisich, Manuela Minsel (all Tax, Munich), Thomas Zimmer­mann, Dr. Alex­an­der Wandt (both Finance, Munich), Mareike Pfeif­fer (Labor Law, Frank­furt) as well as Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe and Dr. Barbara Sand­fuchs (both IP, Munich).