🇱🇻🇸🇪🇫🇮 Food Industry | Competition
Lantmännen consolidates the bakery chain in the Baltics: from ingredients to bread
Sweden’s Lantmännen ek för is expanding its control across the Baltic bakery market by moving upstream into ingredients. The group has filed to acquire Leipurin Oyj (Finland) and Kebelco AB (Sweden), both key B2B suppliers of bakery ingredients and frozen bake-off products.
Why this matters for Latvia:
Lantmännen already controls bakery production in the region through Leibur AS (Estonia), which in turn owns AS “Hanzas maiznīca” — a major industrial bakery supplying Latvian retail chains. The planned acquisition would therefore link ingredients supply and industrial baking under the same owner.
According to Latvia’s Competition Council, the transaction creates horizontal and vertical overlaps in Latvia, particularly in:
frozen bake-off bakery products,
wholesale supply of bakery ingredients,
supplies to in-store bakeries and foodservice segments.
The regulator has one month to decide on the merger, or up to four months if a deeper investigation is launched. Market participants may submit comments until 19 December 2025.
Context:
The deal illustrates a broader trend of vertical integration in food production, where large agricultural groups seek tighter control over the full value chain — from raw materials to retail shelves.
Image: photos/photo_108@12-12-2025_22-05-12.jpg