PARIS (Reuters) – Commodity group Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) said on Monday it had signed a binding agreement to buy German chemicals maker BASF’s Food and Health Performance Ingredients business as part of its diversification push.
LDC has partly shifted its focus towards the consumer end of the food chain to become less reliant on commodity trading. It launched its own juice brand and established a pulses unit to support expansion into plant-based protein products.
The deal with BASF includes a production site and an R&D centre in Germany and three application labs outside of Germany, LDC said.
BASF said separately that the food and health performance ingredients business had limited synergies into the group and was no longer a strategic focus area for it.
The companies did not give financial details of the agreement.
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
