Agribusiness company Elian has welcomed the Spanish Development Financing Company COFIDES into its share capital. With an investment of €40 million, COFIDES becomes a minority shareholder in the company. The transaction accelerates Elian’s project to turn Barcelona into a key hub for plant-based protein production in Europe and represents public recognition of its key role in European food sovereignty.
This public-private partnership was presented today at the Elian plant in the Port of Barcelona and was attended by the Minister of Business and Labour of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Miquel Sàmper, the Director-General of COFIDES, Miguel Tiana, and the CEO and founder of Elian, Andrés Martín.
The investment has been structured through the Co-investment Fund (FOCO), an instrument of indefinite duration created within the framework of the addendum to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR) and managed by COFIDES. The objective of FOCO is to support, on a co-investment basis with foreign investors, projects in strategic sectors for the transformation and competitiveness of Spain, including the innovative agri-food sector.
The €40 million investment from FOCO will be used to consolidate Elian’s project in Barcelona and support its future growth. Founded in the Catalan capital as a local initiative in January 2021 and currently part of the Viserion International group, which acts as FOCO's co-investor in this transaction, the company is investing more than €300 million in its plant-based protein production facility at the Port of Barcelona. Following the acquisition in 2024 of a benchmark soybean crushing plant in the sector, Elian announced the expansion of its industrial project at the end of 2025, with completion scheduled for early 2028.
With this expansion, which will enable Elian to broaden its range of products, customers and end-use sectors, the plant will reach 90,000 square metres and add more than 100,000 annual tonnes of production capacity for protein derivatives for human food and animal feed, on top of its current 770,000 annual tonnes. The project has been supported by ACCIÓ, the business competitiveness agency of the Department of Business and Labour, through a grant of €2.25 million from the funding line for high-impact business projects.
