Corbion acquired by CVC

CVC Capital Partners submitted a bid valuing Corbion at an enterprise value of €1–10bn, at 31 euros per share, according to press reports in late October 2026. The approach remained exploratory, with no certainty that a formal offer would follow, and it competed with interest from the French yeast producer Lesaffre, which had been reported the previous week. Corbion’s shares had risen sharply since the start of the year, and the company was said to be weighing a partial or complete sale. Listed in Amsterdam, Corbion makes the ingredients that keep food from spoiling and that serve as raw material for other industries. Its largest business produces lactic acid and its derivatives by fermenting sugar, used as natural preservatives in bakery, meat, seafood and pet food, where they replace synthetic additives, and sold to a joint venture that converts them into PLA, a plastic made from plant material rather than oil. Its second business supplies omega-3 oils produced by algae fermentation rather than fish, for aquaculture feed and human nutrition, alongside biomaterials and pharmaceutical ingredients. For CVC, the approach would have added to a position in food ingredients built with its purchase of the food ingredients business of IFF for 4.3 billion dollars. For Lesaffre, which ferments yeast on an industrial scale, the overlap is technical: both companies grow micro-organisms in vats and extract what they produce, and the know-how transfers directly.