German meat manufacturer The Premium Food Group has invested an undisclosed sum in local sausage and hams business The Family Butchers.
A statement from The Family Butchers announced the “strategic partnership” between the two companies, which aims to stabilise “the company in an extremely challenging economic situation”.
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The move is subject to approval from the local antitrust authority.
As part of the agreement, The Family Butchers said it would “be separated from InFamily Foods Holding” with the structure of its shareholding seeing a shakeup.
The Premium Food Group will takeover shares in The Family Butchers from Hans-Ewald Reinert, a co-owner of InFamily Foods Holding.
Reinert has agreed to leave the shareholder agreement to focus on InFamily Foods’ vegan business and the management of the Reinert-Bärchen children’s sausage brand, according to The Family Butchers.
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By GlobalDataWolfgang Kühnl – the other owner of InFamily Foods Holding – will retain shares in the group. Local reports from the German outlet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung suggest The Premium Food Group is looking to take a 48.75% stake, while Kühnl intends to stay on The Family Butchers’s board with a 50% shareholding.
Just Food has contacted The Premium Food Group and The Family Butchers to confirm these details.
As part of the deal, The Family Butchers is to gain “long-term access to raw materials” and “[regain] the financial flexibility that is vital to the survival of the severely ailing company”, it said.
The investment from The Premium Food Group “comes at a time of profound changes within the industry”, said The Family Butchers, as “structural overcapacities, rising costs, tightened regulatory requirements, and an overall decline in meat consumption are putting companies under pressure to adapt”.
The Premium Food Group will continue supplying The Family Butchers with raw materials following the deal. The Family Butchers noted it would continue to source raw materials from a range of suppliers.
It added that “exclusivity for the Premium Food Group is not planned, thus maintaining open competition”.
In its latest 2025 Meat Market and Supply Situation report, the Federal Information Centre for Agriculture (BZL), said pork still makes up the majority of domestic meat consumption in Germany, but that “there has been a downward trend for several years, which was also evident in 2024”.
Per capita consumption of pork in the country declined 0.1kg to 35.8kg in 2024. It also saw declining consumption of beef, the BZL said, with per capita consumption dropping 0.1kg to 11.6kg in 2024. Per capita poultry consumption however was 0.7kg greater than in 2023, at 20.6kg.
The Premium Food Group rebranded from Tönnies Group in 2025 following its changes in recent years from being purely a meat processor to a broader food manufacturer.
Following the changes, the Tönnies brand is now solely associated with the company’s meat production business unit.
Last week, Germany’s competition authority blocked the acquisition by Tönnies of a number of plant assets in the country owned by Netherlands-based peer Vion.
