The Great Reintegration - M&A running wild

A run of acquisitions has reset the active nutrition market in a matter of months. Read together, they tell one story: the biggest names in food are buying their way up the supply chain, and the brands that don't move are running out of room.

Whey is up 140% in two years. So the people who control the whey are buying the brands.

That is the whole story of active nutrition right now, compressed into a single line. But it took a run of deals over a few short months to make the shape of it obvious, and once you see the shape, you cannot unsee it.

The pattern hiding in plain sight

Start with the deals, because the density of them is the point.

Nestlé took full control of YFood at around $523m. Lactalis bought Protein Works. Danone bought Huel, granted, not a dairy brand, but a direct-to-consumer engine with a customer base a food giant cannot build from scratch. And in the same window Lactalis quietly closed a $2.2bn deal for Fonterra's Mainland Group, with a ten-year milk supply agreement attached.

That last one got a fraction of the headlines the others did, and it is the most revealing of the lot. A ten-year milk supply agreement bolted onto a consumer-brands acquisition is not a coincidence. It is a strategy, written in plain sight for anyone paying attention.

The trade press calls this a protein land grab. Maybe. Or maybe it is something more structural: the supply chain folding back on itself.

For twenty years the arrangement in this category ran one way. Dairy processors sold stable, unglamorous commodity whey and protein to the D2C brands and specialists who added the story, built the community, and kept the margin. The processor made pennies a kilo. The brand made the multiple. Nobody at the top of the chain minded, because whey was cheap and protein was a niche for gym-goers.

Then whey doubled. And the brands turned out to own the one thing a dairy giant cannot build at will: a direct relationship with the customer.

So the owners of the raw material are buying it back. Winning back the consumer, integrating the supply, and re-engaging the end customer they had only ever reached at second hand.

milk  →  whey  →  brand  →  subscriber  →  data

Whoever owns most of that chain wins the next decade. Which leaves one question for anyone operating in active nutrition today: are you getting bought, or are you getting buried?

Danone shows the full move

If Lactalis-Fonterra was the pattern stated quietly, Danone's next move was the pattern shouted.

Weeks after buying Huel, Danone acquired Made Group, the Australian owner of Cocobella and Rokeby Farms, for around A$2bn. Look at what Danone actually bought, because each piece matters. Rokeby Farms is ultra-filtered, high-protein dairy, the exact category quietly eating traditional protein shakes. Made is vertically integrated: production, sourcing, packaging, distribution, all under one roof. And in the same transaction, Danone bought out the remaining 49% of its fresh dairy joint venture with Saputo, locking in the milk supply sitting behind the brands.

Sound familiar? It is the same play Lactalis ran with Fonterra and Protein Works. The same play Nestlé ran with YFood. Buy the brand consumers love, secure the raw material behind it, and own every step the margin passes through while reconnecting with the consumer at the end of it.

Now watch who sold. TPG, the private equity owner, walked away with around $2bn after five years. This is the part that turns a series of deals into a system. The early money gets in, professionalises the brand, scales the revenue, then hands the baton to the strategic powerhouses building the integrated chain. Set against protein's structural growth, the demand reshaped by weight-loss medication, and whey pricing that will not sit still, that is not coincidence. It is a relay race, and we are watching the baton change hands.

Danone paid roughly 15x EBITDA for Made. It paid nearly 30x for Huel. The premium for owning both the customer and the supply chain is not softening.

This is the most contested asset class in food right now. The pattern is not slowing down. It is accelerating. The only question left is who is still independent by the time it stops, and whether that independence turns out to be a choice or a sentence.

The engine underneath: private equity is manufacturing the wave

Then comes the deal that exposes the machinery.

L Catterton paid $680m for Thorne, the science-led supplement brand, in 2023. It has done a phenomenal job since, and is now reportedly exploring a sale at $4bn. That is roughly 6x in under three years, and the buyers said to be circling are exactly who you would expect by now: Unilever has declared an interest, and Haleon is reportedly keen too.

If you have followed the argument this far, you know the pattern. Strategics buying up the active-nutrition chain: Lactalis, Danone, Nestlé. But Thorne exposes the engine underneath all of it, and it is worth saying plainly.

Private equity is not just riding this wave. Private equity is manufacturing it.

Look at the relay in full. TPG turns Made Group into a ~$2bn exit to Danone. Novo Holdings builds Kate Farms and sells to Danone. YFM exits Protein Works to Lactalis at 10.8x. Grüns has already joined Unilever's stable this year. And now L Catterton lines up a ~6x flip of Thorne.

The early money gets in, professionalises the brand, scales the revenue, then hands the baton to a strategic who pays up for finished growth: a leading brand with loyal consumers and an on-trend position it could never build from a standing start. Thorne's potential new owners come at it from very different angles, one a diversified giant, one a pure health company, but both look willing to invest heavily for a finished article they cannot replicate.

And here is the consequence that reaches everyone, not just the parties to the deal. If L Catterton can turn $680m into $4bn in under three years, the wellness multiple has not just risen. It has been repriced for everyone. Every founder-built health brand with real growth just became more valuable, and more contested.

So the question is not whether your category is consolidating. It is who ends up holding the asset: the founder, the fund, or the strategic. Right now the fund is winning, and it is investing fast and deep.

The chain folds one more way

Just when the pattern looked complete, Cinven added a direction nobody had used yet.

Cinven agreed to merge Vitamin Well, the Swedish group behind Barebells and NOCCO, with EMPWR Nutrition Group, the manufacturer that makes the bars. And here is the detail that matters: EMPWR was not just any contract manufacturer. It was already the primary producer of the entire Barebells range, with Vitamin Well as its single largest customer.

So this is not a brand chasing growth. It is a brand chasing control.

For two years the pattern has built in one direction after another. Dairy giants buying forward to the customer. Unilever buying sideways into science. And now a private-equity-backed brand platform buying backwards, into the factory that already makes its product.

The logic is identical every time. When demand outruns supply, owning the brand stops being enough. You want the production line too: the capacity, the recipes, the margin that a booming protein market is making scarce. Vitamin Well did not buy a supplier it might need one day. It bought the supplier it already depended on, and took that dependency off the table for good.

There is a financial elegance to it as well. A branded platform like Vitamin Well trades at a premium multiple. A contract manufacturer trades at a fraction of it. Fold the factory into the group and the same earnings are revalued upward overnight. Control and value creation in a single move.

The chain keeps folding in on itself. Dairy, science, and now the factory floor.

What this means, and what it demands

Pull the four moves together and the picture is coherent, not chaotic. Every major player is racing to own more of the same chain, and each is entering it from wherever its starting position allows. The dairy giants integrate forward, because they already hold the milk. Unilever buys sideways into credibility and science, because it has no clinical heritage to build on. The PE-backed platforms integrate backwards into manufacturing, because supply is the thing that constrains them. Different routes, one destination: control of more of the line from raw material to customer.

The opportunities

For brand owners with any upstream control, secured contracts or a genuine supply relationship, that is now a premium asset, not a cost line, and it belongs in the next valuation conversation. For founders, the wellness multiple has been repriced upward, which means a credible, growing, on-trend brand is worth more today than it was six months ago. For anyone who can bridge brand and supply, whether through ownership, partnership or licensing, the market is paying a premium for exactly that completeness.

The challenges

The same whey curve funding these deals is squeezing the brands that do not get bought. If you have no forward contracts, no vertical integration and no acquirer circling, you are choosing between absorbing margin you cannot afford to lose and raising prices into a cost-of-living squeeze. Independence is getting more expensive to defend, because an integrated giant can subsidise price from elsewhere in the chain while you cannot. And if your entire differentiation is a direct customer relationship, understand that this is now the explicit acquisition target, which is a gift if you want an exit and a threat if you want to stay your own.

So the question every operator should be asking is the plain one. When capacity gets tight and the raw material keeps climbing, do you own the line that makes your product, or are you renting it from someone who might just buy you instead?

I love this category precisely because it does not sit still. Every week the board changes. In a market moving this fast, standing still is the only losing move. The best owners, brands and manufacturers are not watching this happen. They are the ones making it happen.

That is the fun part.

seventy-8  consulting

Category intelligence and growth strategy for brand operators, retailers and investors in active nutrition and functional food and drink. If your brand's position on the chain is worth a sharper look, that is the conversation we have.

karl@seventy-8.co.uk  |  +44 (0) 7876 527192  |  www.seventy-8.co.uk

Deal values are as reported at the time of writing; the Thorne sale and its rumoured bidders remain at the exploratory stage. Sources cross-referenced across trade and financial press. © 2026 seventy-8. All rights reserved.