US chemical company Dupont and US agribusiness giant Bunge have announced the formation of a joint venture, named Solae LLC, to produce and market speciality food.
The joint venture will participate in the rapidly growing market for healthy food proteins. It will provide a broad offering of soy ingredient products aimed at better fitting customer needs, including textured vegetable proteins, soy concentrates and isolates and specialty lecithins.
DuPont will contribute its Protein Technologies food ingredients business for a majority interest in the joint venture. In exchange for its specialty food ingredients businesses, Bunge will receive a 28% interest in the joint venture plus an estimated US$260m in cash, to be funded by joint venture debt, and will have the right to increase its ownership to 40% based upon a pre-agreed formula. The joint venture’s board will be made up of four members, two each from DuPont and Bunge.
Initially, global revenues of Solae are expected to exceed $800m annually. The joint venture, which will be based in St. Louis, Missouri, is scheduled to start up later this year, subject to negotiation of definitive agreements, which will contain customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals.
