Morning Hubsters,
Happy Fri-yay! John R Fischer here, coming to you from the New York newsroom with the US Wire.
Wellness and preventative health trends are making nutraceuticals popular among consumers. This demand is attracting private equity firms, such as Butterfly Equity, Graham Partners and Wise Equity. We’ll discuss a few deals by these firms in my seven-deal listicle.
Switching to life sciences for Friday Focus. Today, we’ll delve into Astorg’s over $1 billion carve-out of Thermo Fischer’s microbiology business that closed this week. We’ve also got details on two deals with similar enterprise values from the past month.
Health aware
As consumers pay more attention to wellness, nutraceuticals are an increasingly common part of people’s daily routines. Nutraceuticals are foods, food components and food-derived extracts that aim to provide health benefits. Growing demand for nutraceuticals and the subsector’s high fragmentation are attracting private equity investments.
PE Hub has also covered deals in the dietary supplements segment. While the sectors are closely linked, not all dietary supplements fall under the nutraceuticals category.
I rounded up seven deals in the nutraceuticals sector dating back to the beginning of 2026. Here are two:
Wise Equity announced in August the acquisition of E-Pharma Trento, an Italian contract development and manufacturing organization specializing in nutraceuticals and consumer health pharmaceuticals. The acquisition was made from WiseEquity VI.
Existing shareholder Unifarm, a holding company for pharmaceutical wholesale distribution services, retained a minority stake in the company.
E-Pharma Trento’s portfolio consists of effervescent tablets and granules, soluble powders and orodispersible forms, all of which it manufactures at its two plants in Trento. Together, they have a combined capacity of around 900 million units per year. The company’s end-of-year 2025 revenue was over €55 million, around 45 percent of which came from outside Italy, according to the transaction press release.
“E-Pharma dominates a technological niche in which, across the whole of Europe, very few players are genuinely equipped to compete: a position that is hard to build and just as hard to attack,” said Stefano Ghetti, senior partner of Wise Equity, in a statement. “This is precisely the kind of company Wise Equity invests in – a solid leadership in a specialized segment, a strong export orientation and real room to grow, particularly in nutraceuticals.”
In July, Butterfly Equity and Graham Partners announced their investment in Custom Flavors, a maker of liquid and powdered sweet flavors.
Based in San Clemente, California, Custom Flavors serves the nutraceuticals industry, as well as businesses focused on gummies, protein, nutrition, functional foods and beverages, and better-for-you snacks.
As part of the transaction, Butterfly and Graham have created a flavor investment platform that backs Custom Flavors and Target Flavors, a flavor house for the beverage, dairy, dairy alternatives, pharmaceutical and bakery industries that Graham backed in 2025.
Beyond the completed deals in our listicle, more are coming. In July, Bain Capital agreed to acquire Vitabiotics, a nutraceutical and vitamins manufacturer. The deal includes the company’s UK operations and the wider VB Group, encompassing Meyer Organics in India and operations across Africa. Completion of the transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. In March, Lone Star agreed to acquire the capsules and health ingredients division of Lonza Group for an enterprise value of SFr2.3 billion ($2.95 billion; €2.55 billion). The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.
Friday Focus
Demand for antimicrobial testing is on the rise, as countries aim to combat infections across the globe. Private equity has taken note, targeting investments in microbiology in the fragmented sector. Businesses in the segment are also increasingly outsourcing services to contract research or development and management organizations.
A large transaction in the sector closed earlier in the week. Astorg announced the completion of the acquisition of the global microbiology business of Thermo Fischer Scientific for around $1.1 billion.
Based in Waltham, Massachusetts, Thermo Fisher is a life science and clinical research company. Its microbiology business develops diagnostic consumables and equipment for microbiological testing across clinical, food safety and pharmaceutical applications.
Under Astorg, the microbiology business, which has over 15,000 customers across over 100 countries, will operate as an independent company and launch under a new corporate brand later in 2026.
The PE firm announced the agreement for the carve-out in April. The announcement followed the completed $8.87 billion sale of clinical trial data firm Clario Holdings to Thermo Fischer by Astorg, Nordic Capital, Cinven and Novo Holdings.
Astorg paid 9.4x 2026E cash EBITDA for the microbiology business, PE Hub understands, in a market that typically demands 11x.
“We were able to negotiate a tailor-made package for that deal,” Judith Charpentier, co-managing partner and co-head flagship, told PE Hub’s Craig McGlashan in July.
She added that the business aligns with the firm’s strategy of targeting “medtech and diagnostics segments with growth potential and critical products, where we can create value through complex transaction structures such as carve-outs or P2Ps, and build market leaders with strategic value.”
The Thermo Fischer carve-out is not the only healthcare transaction of this size to close recently. Earlier in August, Montagu and Kohlberg closed their carve-out of medical technology giant Teleflex’s OEM business for $1.5 billion in cash − $1.25 billion after tax proceeds, according to Teleflex estimates. The agreement for the deal was announced in December.
In late July, American Industrial Partners completed the take-private of Avanos Medical, another medtech company, for approximately $1.3 billion. That transaction agreement was announced in April.
Well, that’s it for me. As always, if you have questions, comments or want to chat, drop me an email at john.fischer@pei.group.
Nina Lindholm will be back with the Europe Wire on Monday, while Rafael Canton once again fills in for MK Flynn with the US Wire.
Cheers,
John