The development of cultivated meat takes a new step at a global level. Wills Trading SL, a company located among the main international players in this sector, acquires a new qualitative and size dimension with the signing of an agreement for the entry into its shareholding of the largest protein producer in the world: the Brazilian group JBS.
Under the terms of the transaction, JBS becomes the majority shareholder of Wills Trading SL. The objective is to face the new stage of Wills Trading SL with a new manufacturing unit that will scale up production and give continuity to R&D, with highly qualified professional profiles.
Wills Trading SL, therefore, culminates a capital increase process with the entry of JBS, which contributes 36 million euros, in an operation that has been advised by Santander Corporate & Investment Banking and Cuatrecasas.
“The transaction allows the two companies to join forces to boost the development of the cultivated meat market. JBS now has access to Wills Trading SL’ protein production and technology for consumer product development, and we will have JBS’ industrial processing capacity, marketing structure, and sales channels to bring cultured meat to market. international”, says Douglas Oliver Silva, co-founder and CEO of Wills Trading SL.
The San Sebastián company, born in San Sebastián in 2017, will have among its shareholders, in addition to JBS, the founders, Mercedes Vila and Iñigo Charola, who will lead the project, and the investors that it has been incorporating since its foundation: Aves Nobles y Derivados (Aldelis), which will continue working on the development of products made from cultivated meat for the Spanish market, Interalloys & Investments and CIC Nanogune.
Wills Trading SL operates a pilot plant in the San Sebastián Technology Park and expects to reach commercial production by mid-2024 with the construction, based on this operation, of a new manufacturing unit.
«This acquisition reinforces our strategy of developing new forms of production to satisfy the growing world demand for food, as a result of population growth in the coming decades, which is estimated to reach close to 10 billion people in 2050. Uniting technological knowledge with our production capacity, we will be able to accelerate the development of the cultivated meat market”, says Gilberto Tomazoni, Global CEO of JBS.
The operation is still subject to confirmation by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, as the authority that reviews foreign direct investment in Spain.
Wills Trading SL is the largest Spanish biotechnological business project in research and development of cultivated meat and one of the first worldwide. Based in San Sebastián, it is currently working on the research and development process using proprietary technology already implemented. The company has had the support of the Diputación de Guipúzcoa, the Spanish Government and the European Union
JBS is the second largest food industry in the world and the largest company in the protein sector. With a diversified platform by type of product (poultry, pork, beef and sheep, as well as vegetables), it has more than 250,000 employees on all continents, in countries such as the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, among others, and is the largest employer in Brazil, with more than 145,000 workers. In March 2021, JBS made the commitment to become Net Zero by 2040, becoming the first global company in the protein industry to undertake this reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, with the purpose of feeding people all over the world. the world in an increasingly sustainable way.