Ambienta, the largest European fund focused on sustainability, has reached an agreement for the sale of Nactarome to Ta Associates, an international private equity that has beaten the competition, taking over it with a maxi-valuation of over 500 million euros.
According to rumors, Ta Associates would have beaten competition from other private equity firms, but also from international strategic groups. A few months ago Lazard and Bnp Paribas had been charged with evaluating some expressions of interest that came spontaneously for the Ambienta subsidiary: so in the race, since the beginning there have been foreign groups, such as the Swiss multinational Firmenich, the German group Symrice, the Irish multinational Kerry and, finally, the American agri-food giant, McCornick, as well as large international private equity.
Nactarome, based in Bresso, near Milan, is a platform born in January 2020 after the acquisition of the French Nactis Flavors and the aggregation of the Italian Aromata Group, controlled by Ambienta since 2018, and the Parma-based Ipam, of which Aromata had also acquired the majority in 2019.
In the last two years, thanks to the support of Ambienta, the advancement through some important acquisitions has continued. In fact, six of them have been made in Italy and abroad. In 2020, Nactarome bought Create Flavors, one of the largest English producers of natural flavors for the food & beverage industry.
Subsequently it acquired the British TasteConnection, one of the main British producers of aromatic solutions for the food sector. Finally, Nactarome took over the German distributor of food colors, Pharmorgana.