SOLUM PARTNERS takes majority stake in GREENYARD

This take-private transaction transitions Greenyard NV from a public listing on Euronext Brussels into a closely held corporate structure, executing a strategic buy-out engineered by Solum Partners alongside the founding Deprez family to reset the company's capital allocation strategy. The shift to private ownership is driven by the structural requirement to fund multi-year, low-yield capital expenditure programs—specifically cold-chain infrastructure automation and digital supply-chain integration—which are fundamentally misaligned with the immediate earnings-per-share visibility demanded by public equity markets. Prior to the buyout, Greenyard successfully demonstrated the scalability of its integrated customer model but faced balance sheet constraints when financing concurrent upstream farm acquisitions across disparate geographic production zones. Post-acquisition priorities will prioritize the immediate balance sheet integration of the group's recently consolidated global farming assets, optimizing total asset turnover across its 21-country logistical footprint, and executing a simplified squeeze-out process to eliminate minority shares, thereby ensuring untethered cash flow redirection toward large-scale infrastructure modernization.

Previously, Greenyard had completed the acquisition of Gigi Gelato in 2023 as part of its consolidation strategy.