Lactalis is a family-owned company headquartered in Laval, France that owns 12 consumer brands, and has 6 recorded transactions.[1]
Lactalis is the largest dairy company in the world by revenue, founded in Laval, France in 1933 and still owned by the Besnier family, which has never listed it. It publishes limited financial information and has grown almost entirely by acquiring national dairy champions across Europe, the Americas and Australia.
Saputo agreed to sell its United Kingdom operations, Saputo Dairy UK, to Lactalis for an enterprise value of about £988 million. The business includes Cathedral City, the best-selling cheddar in Britain, along with Davidstow, Wensleydale, Clover and Country Life, which Saputo gained with Dairy Crest in 2019. Coming months after Lactalis bought Fonterra's Anchor and Mainland, it would make the French family group the owner of the leading British cheddar as well.
Fonterra sold its entire global consumer business to Lactalis, agreeing the sale in August 2025 for NZ$3.845 billion and completing it on 31 March 2026; resolving a separate dispute with Bega Cheese took total proceeds to NZ$4.22 billion. It moved a century of New Zealand household dairy brands, Anchor and Mainland among them, to a French family company in a single transaction, and turned Fonterra into a business-to-business supplier that now sells milk and ingredients to the buyer of its own brands under agreements running at least ten years. Fonterra kept the Anchor consumer brand in Greater China.
Lactalis acquired Siggi's, an American skyr maker founded by an Icelandic immigrant who could not find yoghurt as thick or as low in sugar as the one he had grown up with. The price was not disclosed and only the year is documented here.
Lactalis acquired Stonyfield Farm from Danone for about $875 million. Danone was selling because American antitrust authorities required it to divest Stonyfield as a condition of completing its purchase of WhiteWave Foods, so this acquisition exists only because of a remedy imposed on another deal in this dataset.
Lactalis took control of Parmalat through a public tender offer at EUR 2.60 per share, gaining the Italian dairy group that had collapsed in 2003 in what was then the largest corporate fraud in European history. The Italian government objected to a national champion passing into French hands and briefly changed takeover rules in response.
Lactalis acquired Galbani from the private equity firm BC Partners, buying the largest cheese brand in Italy and with it a position in mozzarella and mascarpone that its French portfolio lacked. The price was not disclosed by the parties.
Lactalis controlled this brand in the past. Each row shows when the ownership ended and who holds the brand now, so a page that once said Lactalis owned it still shows why it no longer does.
The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) keeps an open register of legal entities. Each entity reports its own parents. We show it as a cross-check on the ownership recorded on this page, which is built from filings.
Lactalis owns 12 consumer brands tracked here, including Anchor, Western Star, Galbani, Parmalat, Président and Anlene.
Is Lactalis a French company?
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Yes. Lactalis is headquartered in Laval, France and was founded in 1933.
Who owns Lactalis?
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Lactalis is privately held. Lactalis is the largest dairy company in the world by revenue, founded in Laval, France in 1933 and still owned by the Besnier family, which has never listed it.
What was Lactalis' most recent acquisition?
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The most recent completed acquisition recorded here is Anchor, Mainland, Anlene, Anmum, Kapiti, Perfect Italiano and Western Star on 31 March 2026.
Sources (5) & corrections
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
[1]Our brands - Lactalis USA — Lactalis USA (Groupe Lactalis), Official document; retrieved 28 September 2026.
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