Natural Fruit Company Creates Europe’s Leading Lemon Exporter
GPF Capital has closed a private equity investment in Frugarva by integrating the Spanish business into its citrus holding The Natural Fruit Company. Frugarva, founded in Murcia in 1965, is one of the leading companies in Spain in the production, processing and distribution of lemons and pomegranates. With its 51,000 sq m of facilities located in Alhama (Murcia) and employing more than 400 workers, Frugarva serves more than 70,000 tons of fruit per year to its national and international customers. Its turnover is exceeds €50 million per year, of which exports represent more than 90% of the total.
With The Natural Fruit Company’s bolt-on acquisition of Frugarva, the combined group will now have an aggregate turnover of more than €200 million.
Together, GPF Capital and the management teams of The Natural Fruit Company and Frugarva will continue to develop the strategic plan initiated a year ago by the group, the pillars of which are: to maintain, reinforce and expand the variety of quality products and services offered to its clients in Europe; and to give solidity to the development of a growth plan that combines the vertical integration of the business, the strengthening of the quality and the international expansion.
The first steps of this plan have already materialised during 2020 with the opening of a logistics centre in France which has allowed to increase the logistic capacities of the group as well as with the opening of a new plant in Valencia in which an investment of more than €25 million has been made, thus increasing the productive capacity of the group to undertake a strong growth in the next years.
The acquisition of Frugarva comes 11 months after GPF Capital integrated Fruxeresa and Frutas Naturales into the citrus holding The Natural Fruit Company.
Founded in 2015 by Martín Rodríguez-Fraile, Ignacio Olascoaga, Lorenzo Martínez de Albornoz and Guillermo Castellanos, GPF currently manages €700 million. All funds managed by the firm are backed exclusively by private investors from Spain, USA and 13 Latin American countries.
