Lusiaves Buys Padesa and Builds a €1.5 Billion Poultry Group

Grupo Lusiaves took a majority stake in Spanish poultry group Padesa on 30 September 2026, after Spain’s competition watchdog cleared exclusive control. The Portuguese producer did not disclose the price or the exact share. Combined, the group now employs about 9,000 people in Portugal, Spain and France and books about €1.5 billion in sales.

The Amposta deal is Lusiaves’ third Spanish poultry buy in under a year. It follows Ukraine’s MHP taking over Uvesa. A Catalan chicken and turkey processor now sits inside a Portuguese-led Iberian group that can face supermarket buyers at a different size.

The CNMC Called It Exclusive Control

Spain’s Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia authorised exclusive control of Padesa on 4 September 2026, in case C/1712/26. The filing names the buyer as Grupo Lusiaves – SGPS, S.A. and the target as Pavo y Derivados, S.A. The secretary of the council, acting by delegation, cleared the concentration under article 57.2.a of Law 15/2007.

The sectors listed on the file run from poultry farming through farm-animal feed, prepared meals and wholesale meat. That matches how both groups describe themselves: feed to farm to plant to pack. Exclusive control is a legal finding. It can sit beside minority shareholders and a family still in the manager’s office, which is the structure Lusiaves put in the statement that closed the deal.

Completion came on Wednesday, 30 September 2026, Lusiaves said. The statement went out in the first days of October. Financial terms stayed private, including the size of the majority slice. Peruvian agri-food group Grupo Valora took a minority. The Salvadó and Centelles families remain shareholders. They also stay in charge of day-to-day management at Padesa.

In the year in which we mark four decades of history, this is the most significant step in our international expansion strategy. It is about joining forces with an organisation that shares our culture and our integrated approach to the value chain.

Avelino Gaspar, founder and chairman, Grupo Lusiaves

Gaspar’s group founded in 1986 in Leiria and still presents itself as family-owned Portuguese capital. The parent is not selling a stake in that story. The new money sits at Padesa, where Valora is the minority and the Catalan families keep a share. Lusiaves said the deal keeps Padesa’s management teams, brand identity, and ties with staff, growers, suppliers and local communities.

Three Spanish Buys in Under a Year

Padesa is the large one. The path to Amposta ran through León and Madrid first. Lusiaves took a majority of Grupo Oblanca, effective 1 October 2025. Oblanca then bought Avícola Segoviana in November 2025, a 100% take through the Spanish subsidiary. Padesa closed on 30 September 2026. That is three Spanish poultry deals in 364 days.

THE SPANISH POULTRY BUYS

Oblanca gave Lusiaves plants and a sales base in Castile and León. Segoviana is a distributor, not a slaughter group, and its €9.5 million of sales shows the method: buy a door into Madrid, then buy a processor that can fill it. Padesa is a different order of size. Its sales alone exceed the Portuguese group’s old Oblanca-era perimeter, and they sit close to Lusiaves’ own more than €900 million of revenue before the Catalan add-on.

THE YEAR THAT BUILT THE IBERIAN PERIMETER

1. 1 October 2025: Lusiaves takes a majority in León poultry group Oblanca, which employs more than 650 people and had posted €123 million of sales.
2. 12 November 2025: Oblanca, under Lusiaves control, buys 100% of Madrid distributor Avícola Segoviana, which employs more than 60 people and sells about €9.5 million a year.
3. 4 September 2026: the CNMC authorises exclusive control of Pavo y Derivados, S.A. by Grupo Lusiaves – SGPS, S.A.
4. 30 September 2026: Lusiaves completes the majority stake in Padesa, with Valora as minority and the founding families still in management.

DC Advisory, which ran the sale for Padesa, called the close the largest consolidation in Iberian poultry to date. Sell-side bankers talk in superlatives. The arithmetic is plainer. Lusiaves already booked more than €900 million. Padesa books more than €550 million ($620.1 million). The buyer says the combined group is about €1.5 billion. That is a Portuguese family company that can now put Catalan turkey, León chicken and a Madrid depot on one order pad.

Amposta Runs Chicken, Turkey and Aldelís

Padesa was founded in 1973 and is based in Amposta, in Tarragona province, in Catalonia’s Terres de l’Ebre. Lusiaves called it one of Spain’s main poultry operators. DC Advisory, advising the sellers, placed it among Spain’s five largest chicken producers and as the country’s second-largest turkey operator, with €70 million of EBITDA in 2025 on those sales, 15 subsidiaries and seven plants.

The industrial map is short and tight. Aldelís says the birds are born and reared on farms within 72 km of Amposta and Roquetes, so origin is a selling point rather than a slogan. Padesa’s own site puts the integrated flock at about 300 farms. In 1997 the group folded in Aves Nobles y Derivados, the Zaragoza processed-meat shop that dates to 1967. In 2018 it pulled the labels into one brand.

WHAT PADESA PUTS THROUGH THE PLANTS

• Feed and flocks: The group makes feed, runs breeding and hatcheries, and rears chicken and turkey on about 300 integrated farms.
• Slaughter and cuts: Birds move into seven plants for slaughter, cutting and packing of fresh poultry.
• Processed lines: Burgers, sausages and ready meals sit beside the fresh trays, a mix DC Advisory listed as part of the Aldelís range.
• The shop brand: Since 2018 the group has sold that mix as Aldelís, the name Padesa now takes to Spanish retail.

IFS Food sits on the processing side as the plant standard Padesa cites. For Lusiaves the brand is the prize Jordi Salvadó, shareholder and chief executive of Padesa, named in the close. “We have found in Grupo Lusiaves the right partner for Padesa’s next phase of growth,” he said. “The group’s scale and investment capacity will enable us to accelerate projects and take the Aldelís brand further.”

Founding Families Stay, With a Peruvian Partner

The public structure is a Portuguese majority, a Peruvian minority, and two Catalan families still on the register and in the office. That is a sale of control that tries not to look like a raid. Lusiaves said operations stay stable and the existing brands remain. Padesa still chicken and turkey under Aldelís to the same retail and food-service accounts, at least on paper.

Valora enters through Tecavi, its poultry unit. The Peruvian group already had a reason to want Spanish chicken. It is in the same protein, and it now holds a seat at a processor that DC Advisory said spans more than 300 farms through to burgers and ready meals. The exact Valora share was not published, any more than Lusiaves’ majority percentage was.

A majority can close on a Wednesday and still leave the hard part unwritten. The families who sold control still run the Amposta plants. If the rules of command, capital spending and brand decisions are not set out, the deal starts to twist in ordinary weekly meetings. Lusiaves’ statement does not publish those rules. It says the culture matches and the chain is integrated. Buyers of family processors always say that. The test is whether Amposta still decides the turkey programme six months after the CNMC file went quiet.

About 3,000 Padesa staff sit in the middle of that test, plus the contract growers on those farms. Lusiaves promised continuity with producers and local communities. That is cheap to print and expensive to break in a comarca where Padesa is a large private employer. Gaspar also said the group would keep “deep respect for the roots, the teams and the communities where we operate,” in the longer Portuguese version of the note.

Who Already Owns Spanish Poultry?

Vall Companys remains the Spanish volume leader after taking Sada’s poultry business from Nutreco and, in 2025, control of Andalusian processor Inasur. Ukraine’s MHP closed on more than 92% of Grupo Uvesa in August 2025. Lusiaves had been in that contest and did not win it. Padesa is the Portuguese answer, assembled in three buys rather than one auction, and Valora is the Peruvian cheque sitting beside it.

THE CAPITAL NOW INSIDE SPANISH CHICKEN

• Vall Companys: The Spanish incumbent, bigger after Sada and Inasur, still the name that sets slaughter volume at home.
• MHP / Uvesa: The Ukrainian group took more than 92% of Uvesa in August 2025. WATT’s 2024 poultry-company tally put Uvesa at about 95 million birds a year and about 15% of Spanish poultry meat.
• Lusiaves: Portuguese family capital, now with Oblanca, Segoviana and a majority of Padesa, plus older operations in Portugal and France.
• Valora / Tecavi: Peruvian capital with a minority in Padesa and a poultry unit already hunting Spanish assets.

Spain is not a small chicken market. The European Commission’s agriculture directorate put Spanish poultry meat output at 1.80 million metric tons in 2024, 13% of the EU’s 14.0 million, second inside the bloc. That volume is what the auctions are about. Uvesa was the second large Spanish processor in the trade literature. Lusiaves bid, MHP won, and the Leiria group spent the next year buying what was still for sale: a León integrator, a Madrid depot, then Amposta.

Foreign capital is not a side story in that map. It is the map. A Ukrainian champion already owns a Spanish household processor. A Portuguese champion now owns the Catalan turkey-and-chicken chain that sells as Aldelís. A Peruvian group holds a minority on the same register. Spanish family names remain on the door at Padesa. The share that carries exclusive control sits in Leiria.

The New Group Walks Into a Brazil Import Halt

Lusiaves said Padesa strengthens its place in Iberian and European poultry-meat markets, in “the protein with the highest growth in consumption.” Chicken is the cheap white meat retailers push when beef and pork run hot. Scale is how a processor answers those buyers, and how it lives with feed swings. A group at about €1.5 billion can bid for contracts that a €123 million León company cannot.

THE MARKET THE DEAL WALKS INTO

• Combined sales: Lusiaves puts the new perimeter at about €1.5 billion, with about 9,000 staff in Portugal, Spain and France.
• Padesa’s 2025 profit: DC Advisory recorded €70 million of EBITDA on more than €550 million of sales, before the Portuguese majority closed.
• Brazil’s 2024 EU trade: Extra-EU poultry imports from Brazil were about 286,936 tonnes carcass weight, about €625 million, 32% of that extra-EU flow.
• The halt: The EU stopped Brazilian poultry from 3 September 2026 over antimicrobial rules. A DG SANTE audit published on 28 September 2026 was favourable, with SCoPAFF votes listed for 20-21 October and 16-17 November 2026.

The Amposta close and the Brazil halt sat in the same month. Nothing in the Lusiaves note ties them. They still describe the same trade. Cheap extra-EU chicken is the pressure Iberian plants plan around, and a sudden gap in Brazilian supply is a window, not a permanent wall. If member states put Brazil back on the eligible list this autumn, the window narrows. If they do not, European processors with spare plants and a retail brand have more of the shelf to fight over.

Aldelís is that brand in Spain. Lusiaves is the factory network that now sits behind it, from Leiria through León to Amposta, with a French line already on the group map. The majority is done. The families are still in the chair. The price is still unpublished. What changed on 30 September 2026 is the size of the Iberian supplier on the other side of the supermarket desk.