Belgian bakery group Vandemoortele considers selling UK pastry plant to win CMA approval

Vandemoortele, the Belgium-based bakery group, has proposed selling its frozen pastry plant in Worcester to address UK competition concerns and secure clearance for its acquisition of French rival Délifrance.

The divestment package put to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) covers the Worcester facility's plant assets, supply contracts, customer relationships and 73 production staff, offered to a suitable third-party buyer as an operating business. The CMA is consulting on whether the proposed sale is sufficient to resolve its concerns, with stakeholders able to submit comments until 25 June.

The offer follows the regulator's decision to refer Vandemoortele's purchase of Délifrance for an in-depth Phase 2 investigation on 22 April 2026. The CMA took that step after an earlier set of commitments, agreed to address its initial findings, failed to produce an approved buyer before the deadline expired.

Vandemoortele announced the acquisition of Délifrance in March 2025. The transaction would combine two of Europe's largest producers of frozen viennoiserie and laminated dough, creating a bakery group with annual revenue of around €2.4 billion. Vandemoortele operates 28 manufacturing plants and employs about 3,500 people, with brands including Lizzi, Banquet d'Or and Lanterna and supply across Europe and the United States. Délifrance runs 14 production facilities and employs more than 3,200 staff, serving retail and foodservice customers across Europe and Asia.

Both businesses supply frozen viennoiserie products, including croissants and pains au chocolat, to supermarkets and foodservice operators, who bake and resell the items to consumers. The CMA found that the merger could make Vandemoortele the largest supplier of frozen viennoiserie products in the UK by a considerable margin. The regulator concluded that the transaction "could substantially affect competition in the supply of these products, potentially leading to higher prices or lower quality for customers in the UK."

The Worcester proposal is the second remedy Vandemoortele has tabled across the deal's overlapping regulatory reviews. To win clearance from the European Commission, the company committed in December 2025 to divest two Délifrance frozen laminated dough plants in France, at Avignon in the south and Béthune in the north. The Commission approved the acquisition on that basis, judging the combined capacity of the two sites sufficient to allow a buyer to compete against the merged group. Those disposals did not complete, and with no buyer submitted to the CMA before its own deadline in December 2025, the UK process moved to its current stage.

In the UK, the CMA had initially indicated that selling Délifrance's UK laminated dough business, alongside the two French facilities, might resolve its concerns. When no purchaser was put forward for approval, the regulator referred the deal for detailed scrutiny by an independent panel. The Worcester package now represents a structural remedy aimed specifically at the UK market, intended to preserve a competing source of frozen laminated dough and viennoiserie supply once the wider combination completes.

The CMA has said it may also consider other practicable remedies beyond the Worcester sale to address the competition concerns it has identified. The consultation closing on 25 June will inform whether the proposed divestment is accepted as it stands, amended, or set aside in favour of an alternative.

Vandemoortele has not disclosed a sale price for the Worcester plant or standalone financial figures for the site, and no information is available on the value of the proposed divestment. The company's group accounts give a measure of the scale of the wider business into which Délifrance would be integrated. Vandemoortele reported group revenue of approximately €1.925 billion in 2023, an increase of €186 million on the previous year.

Revenue rose further to about €2.21 billion in 2025, a 7% year-on-year increase that the company attributed in part to recent acquisitions in Italy and other markets.

The group's bakery products division generated roughly €1.5 billion of revenue in 2025, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of about €197 million and volume growth of 4%. Group adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was around €267 million, while earnings after tax were about €43 million. Délifrance would be folded into the bakery products division, lifting the combined group's revenue towards the €2.4 billion mark cited when the deal was announced.

For Vandemoortele, the proposed Worcester disposal amounts to giving up a revenue-generating UK asset in order to secure the larger pan-European combination with Délifrance. The frozen viennoiserie and laminated dough categories at the centre of the regulators' concerns sit within the bakery division that the acquisition is designed to expand, and the UK plant represents a slice of turnover the company is prepared to forgo to clear the remaining regulatory hurdle.

The Phase 2 investigation continues alongside the consultation, and the independent panel retains the power to require further measures if it concludes the Worcester sale would not adequately protect competition. A buyer for the facility has yet to be identified.

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