Groupe Grimaud

Who owns Groupe Grimaud?

Groupe Grimaud was owned by Crédit Mutuel Equity through Crédit Mutuel Equity (1992 vintage) from 2011 to 2021. Across its history, Groupe Grimaud has been through 2 private equity ownership periods, detailed in the timeline below.

Hand-verified · updated 2026-04-21

About Groupe Grimaud

Groupe Grimaud, headquartered in Sevremoine in western France, is one of the world's leading animal genetics and biopharma groups, specializing in the genetic selection of gastronomic poultry and aquaculture species including ducks, guinea fowl, pigeons, geese and shrimp, alongside bioproductions that supply fundamental components for human and animal vaccines and medicines. The group also runs an innovative-proteins arm covering cultivated meat and insect protein, positioning itself as a family-controlled specialist rather than a mass-market commodity breeder. According to the group's own disclosures, it generated revenue of around EUR 130 million in 2023 with roughly 1,000 employees, and it draws close to two thirds of its sales from international markets across a network of breeding and research sites. Its workforce spans dozens of nationalities, reflecting a global distribution footprint for genetically selected breeding stock.

Ownership journey

Groupe Grimaud was founded in 1966 in Roussay, in the Maine-et-Loire region of western France, by the brothers Joseph and Bernard Grimaud, who began as duck breeders before building an international genetics business anchored by an early research partnership with the French agricultural research institute INRA. To support its expansion and acquisitions, the family-controlled group took on institutional minority backing from Naxicap Partners, which invested in 2005 and exited in 2011 via a secondary transaction. From 2011, Credit Mutuel Equity held the minority financial stake, remaining a shareholder until it exited in 2021 via a secondary transaction. Throughout this sequence the Grimaud family retained majority control of the group, with the private-equity investors acting as minority partners rather than owners.

Under PE ownership

The successive minority backings underpinned an ambitious buy-and-build phase during which Grimaud broadened well beyond its original waterfowl base. In 2005 it acquired Hubbard, a leader in broiler-chicken genetics, and around the same period it created the biotech subsidiary Vivalis and the veterinary vaccine business Filavie, later adding layer selection through Novogen and pig-breeding alliances. During the 2011 to 2021 window the group launched its Blue Genetics aquaculture branch, expanded in guinea fowl and rabbit genetics, and seeded longer-term ventures including Vital Meat in cultivated protein and Fly Genetics in insect protein. In the closing years of the period it became a certified mission-driven company and executed a strategic refocus on fine-food genetics, divesting units such as Filavie to concentrate on its core selection and bioproduction platforms, reaching revenue of roughly EUR 130 million by 2023.