Difagri

Who owns Difagri?

Difagri is currently owned by FrenchFood Capital through FrenchFood Positive Impact (2022 vintage), since 2022.

Hand-verified · updated 2026-04-21

About Difagri

Difagri is a French animal-nutrition company that designs, manufactures and distributes nutritional supplements and specialty feeds for livestock, historically focused on ruminants such as dairy cattle and now extending across pigs, poultry and other monogastric species. Based at Saint Hilaire de Loulay near Montaigu in the Vendee, it supplies farmers, distributors and feed manufacturers with supplements in liquid, powder, pellet and bolus form, marketed under brands including HFM, Propymilk+, Gluco'Nat and Opti Thi and produced in part through an absorption-on-support process that fixes liquid nutrients onto plant or mineral carriers. With more than fifty years in animal dietetics, the group positions itself in the fastest-growing segment of the animal-nutrition market and has built out one of the more modern production facilities in the sector. Following a wave of acquisitions, the combined group reached consolidated revenue of about EUR 35 million by 2025.

Ownership journey

Difagri was founded in 1973 as a family business in the Vendee and was led from 2007 by Philippe Gauthier, under whom it grew at roughly 14 percent a year through 2022. In December 2022 FrenchFood Capital acquired a majority stake through its FrenchFood Positive Impact fund, its vehicle dedicated to the food transition, investing alongside Unexo, part of the Credit Agricole group, with the historic leadership retained as co-shareholders via Gauthier Nutrition. The deal was one of the first two investments made by the FrenchFood Positive Impact strategy, structured with five-year impact objectives tied to the management package. FrenchFood Capital remains the majority owner and Difagri is a current portfolio company, with no exit or secondary transaction recorded.

Under PE ownership

Since the 2022 investment Difagri has pursued a buy-and-build strategy that broadened it from a ruminant-focused supplements maker into a wider livestock-nutrition group. It acquired Neofeed in 2024, launched a subsidiary in Vietnam in February 2025, and in April 2025 combined with Alinova, a monogastric-nutrition specialist founded in 2018, to create a French leader spanning both ruminant and monogastric species and lifting consolidated revenue to about EUR 35 million. Leadership was reinforced with Cedric de Boulogne as chief executive, and the investment thesis carried explicit sustainability targets, including reduced reliance on soybean meal, with roughly 2,765 tons avoided by 2024, and lower methane emissions. Difagri-branded sales across its sustainability categories reached EUR 7.6 million in 2024, with a stated ambition of EUR 8.4 million by 2028.