IN Brief:
- COFIDES is taking a minority stake in Elian through a €40 million investment from Spain's FOCO co-investment fund.
- Elian's Port of Barcelona complex is undergoing a wider expansion exceeding €300 million in cumulative investment.
- The enlarged site is planned to add more than 100,000 tonnes of annual protein-derivative capacity by early 2028.
Elian has secured a €40 million investment from Spanish state-backed finance company COFIDES as it expands its plant protein operation at the Port of Barcelona.
COFIDES will become a minority shareholder through Spain’s Co-investment Fund, known as FOCO, with Viserion International participating as co-investor. The transaction adds state-backed capital to an industrial programme in which Elian is investing more than €300 million in its Barcelona production complex.
The site currently has annual capacity of around 770,000 tonnes. Expansion scheduled for completion in early 2028 will add more than 100,000 tonnes of yearly capacity for protein derivatives intended for human food and animal feed, while increasing the plant footprint to approximately 90,000 square metres.
Elian acquired an established soybean crushing plant in 2024 before announcing the next stage of the industrial project towards the end of 2025. Building around an operating site gives the company existing intake, processing and logistics infrastructure, although additional production still has to be commissioned while established operations continue.
Oilseed processing depends on more than nominal plant capacity. Incoming crop storage, crushing, separation, utilities, quality assurance and downstream handling have to remain balanced if the additional tonnes are to translate into saleable ingredients rather than bottlenecks elsewhere in the process.
Elian says its operation uses a hydrocarbon-free process from the incoming bean through to finished products. The company is also encouraging non-GMO soybean cultivation in Catalonia and Aragon, with a target of reaching 3,000 hectares during 2026.
The regional sourcing programme sits alongside a wider European effort to strengthen domestic protein supply. COFIDES says the Barcelona plant is one of only three integrated infrastructures of its type in Europe, while the European food and feed sectors remain materially dependent on imported soybean and protein ingredients.
Additional processing capacity does not remove that import exposure on its own. Plants still require sufficient European crop production, competitive raw-material pricing and reliable logistics before local supply can replace imported material at meaningful scale. The Barcelona investment nevertheless adds physical processing infrastructure capable of handling a larger domestic or regional crop base if supply expands.
Capital requirements have become a defining constraint across European protein manufacturing. Recent investment activity has increasingly concentrated on businesses capable of showing a credible route to industrial production, with grants, loans and strategic capital being combined to finance equipment and commissioning work that cannot be funded through laboratory-scale development budgets.
Elian differs from many fermentation-led protein ventures because it is expanding established oilseed processing rather than commercialising a new biological production route. The engineering challenge is therefore centred on throughput, raw-material handling, product separation, quality consistency and customer demand rather than proving an entirely new process at scale.
The €40 million COFIDES investment is being made through FOCO, a vehicle created to co-invest with international investors in sectors considered strategically important to Spain’s competitiveness. Catalonia’s ACCIÓ business competitiveness agency has separately provided €2.25 million from its high-impact investment programme.
Viserion International remains Elian’s industrial owner and co-investor. Its agricultural trading and sourcing operations give the Barcelona processor direct links into commodity markets, an important consideration where plant utilisation depends on sufficient raw material moving into the site throughout the year.
Elian generated €400 million in revenue during 2025 and employs around 90 people. Large-volume primary processing operations can handle substantial tonnage with relatively lean direct workforces, while supporting wider employment across agriculture, port handling, storage, transport and downstream food and feed manufacturing.
The additional capacity will have to be matched by customer qualification and sustained utilisation after commissioning. Protein plants incur high fixed costs regardless of whether equipment is operating close to design output, making reliable demand and raw-material supply central to the economics of the expansion.
Completion is scheduled for early 2028. By then, the project is intended to have converted more than €300 million of cumulative investment into over 100,000 tonnes of additional annual protein-derivative capacity, giving the European ingredients sector a sizeable new piece of processing infrastructure against which ambitions for greater regional protein supply can be measured.
