For Jos Hugense, it was clear: the hefty investments in the growth of Meatless and his age are difficult to combine. Time to sell the producer of textured ingredients for meat substitutes. "To be honest, I am also not the ideal person to take the business to the next phase.
The employees of his meat processing company were a little surprised when Jos Hugense decided to start producing vegetarian products back in 2005. Coming from a butcher family, he and his brothers started Hubro Vleesprodukten in Goes in 1979. But after they were hit hard twice by the outbreak of mad cow disease and revenue plummeted 85 percent, Hugense decided things had to be different. With vegetable fiber.
'At the time, there were hardly any vegetarian products on the market,' Hugense explains. 'It was really pioneering. Besides, the discussion about consuming less meat wasn't really happening yet. So a lot of people thought it was just crazy that I started working with plants. But we saw the prospects for meat dwindling and then made this fundamental choice.'
Next phase
Hugense developed a way to "texturize" raw materials such as wheat, soy, rice, quinoa, peas, lupines and field beans. Meatless produces some three million pounds of dried and frozen vegetable textures for vegetarian meat and fish products. The market around vegetarian products was gaining momentum, in part because plant-based meat substitutes were becoming more mainstream among consumers.
In all those years, Meatless grew rapidly. Years with growth rates of more than 20 percent are the rule rather than the exception for the business from Zeeland. But that rapid growth also meant that Meatless was on the eve of substantial investments in expanding its production capacity. Moreover, Hugense's age - 62 at the time - also began to play a role.
Hugense: "My personal desire to phase out contrasted with the ambitious growth plans for the company. And frankly, I'm not the ideal person to take the business to the next phase either. I am a pioneer, making something out of nothing is what energizes me. As the company moves to the next stage of scaling up and large-scale production, it's time to find a strong partner.'
Working day and night
Hugense is embarking on that quest together with Rembrandt M&A.'Some firms came up with sky-high valuations and promise you golden mountains. In a relatively young, fast-growing niche market, it is very difficult to establish a realistic value. It is a delicate game, you will have to base the valuation partly on the future and partly on the promise of the market.'
Together they drew up a list of potential buyers, totaling more than fifty international parties. Then the ticking off began, carefully gauging interest and holding talks with various buyers. Until four candidates remained. 'And then it got really exciting,' says the Meatless founder. 'From then on, I was working on it day and night. You have preferences, of course, but to a certain extent. The pennies become more and more important. And also the terms of the deal, of course.'
In the end, producer of functional ingredients for food, feed and pharma Beneo, a subsidiary of German listed Südzucker, pulled the longest straw. During the sales process, it became clear that Südzucker wanted to expand Beneo's protein division and that Meatless is an important building block for the future in this.
Getting paper above board
Of the four remaining prospective buyers, Hugense had the most personal click with Südzucker. But doing business with our eastern neighbors is still done with German gründlichkeit. 'Getting paper above board is nobody's hobby,' Hugense said. 'They asked for a lot of information, down to the level of detail. At a certain point I thought: what is it for, it costs us a lot of time. Even during negotiations, everything was recorded to three decimal places, so to speak. That took some getting used to.
Hugense stayed on for two more years to complete the transfer. Not always easy, according to him, because you have handed over the reins and the new owner sometimes makes different choices. 'But just like in a marriage, you have to try to make it work, and by adapting to the new situation, you succeed.'
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