Food and Beverage Industry Insights – Spring 2026

 

M&A Market Overview

In Q1 2026, 60 transactions were announced in the food and beverage industry, representing a 5% quarter-over-quarter increase from Q4 2025 and a 20% year-over-year increase from Q1 2025. This increase in deal activity is encouraging, as it demonstrates growing confidence in the food and beverage industry following a 10-year low in deal activity in 2025. For the TTM period ending March 31, 2025, 249 transactions were announced in the food and beverage industry, which marks a 12% decline from the TTM period ending March 31, 2025.

There were several significant deals announced in Q1 2026, including Pacific Coast Producers’ acquisition of certain branded canned fruit and plastic fruit cup assets of Del Monte Foods Corporation II Inc. through its Chapter 11 proceedings, Refresco’s acquisition of SunOpta, E. & J. Gallo Winery’s acquisition of Four Roses Distillery, Mission Produce’s acquisition of Calavo Growers and Puratos’ acquisition of Dawn Foods. The alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages and general categories experienced the greatest deal activity, representing 60% of total deal volume. The beverage categories alone represented 45% of total deal volume in the quarter.

Over the TTM period ending March 31, 2026, food and beverage M&A volume remained predominantly driven by strategic buyers (including companies primarily owned by private equity investors), with strategic transactions representing 79% of the total deal count. Of the 249 deals announced over the TTM period, 220 (88%) were completed by privately owned buyers.

Interestingly, Q1 2026 experienced an above-normal proportion of deals completed by strategic buyers, which accounted for 88% of total deals in the quarter. A common thesis was product and / or geographic diversification, as food and beverage companies looked to de-risk operations and strengthen their supply chains. This reflects a shift in relation to 2025, where geopolitical conflicts and economic uncertainty pushed deal activity in the sector to a 10-year low as companies paused M&A plans to focus on core operations. As companies gain better understanding of risks and are generally better capitalized to transact, M&A plans are beginning to be re-explored, and for many companies are being considered as a risk-mitigation strategy.

Further to the above, we are seeing an uptick in both strategic buyers and financial sponsors considering and exploring M&A opportunities. We anticipate this momentum to continue, particularly in the back half of 2026 and going into 2027, noting that there is an extended lag time between when a company begins to consider M&A opportunities and when they execute on a transaction (for both the buy-and sell-side).