Chr. Hansen signs agreement to acquire Medipharm from Arla Foods

Today Chr. Hansen and Arla Foods AB signed a conditional agreement on Chr. Hansen’s acquisition of the Swedish Arla Foods' subsidiary Medipharm AB.

Medipharm specializes in probiotic bacterial solutions for the agricultural and food industries and has subsidiaries in the US, the Czech Republic and Hungary with a total of almost 100 employees and sales close to SEK 130 million.

The acquisition of Medipharm will strenghten Chr. Hansen’s activities in probiotic cultures - an area where Chr. Hansen holds a market leader position. Put together with the knowledge within Chr. Hansen on lactic acid bacteria the acquisition will create an opportunity to further grow this business area.

Natural step

“We are most satisfied with this agreement. Cultures are very important to us and over the past years we have experienced quite high growth in this business area. We see the agreement to acquire Medipharm as a natural step in further accelerating the growth within cultures. The agreement further substantiates our strategic focus on developing new and exciting applications with probiotic cultures within the animal health as well as human health areas. We will spend the coming time on getting a thorough overview of all details and then draw up a plan for the future," says Lars Frederiksen, CEO, Chr. Hansen.

Also Arla Foods is content with the agreement with Chr. Hansen.

“In recent years Arla Foods has strengthened its focus on core activities and the divestment of Medipharm represents a natural step in this development. We are quite pleased to sign an agreement with a specialist company like Chr. Hansen, which we are sure will provide the best possible opportunities for growth and development," says Peder Tuborgh, CEO, Arla Foods.

The final closing of the agreement is expected to take place at the beginning of 2008.

The price is not disclosed.