French dairy family business now worth €13bn on cheese sales

The three siblings who own the manufacturer are now worth a combined €13.4bn.

France is home to the world’s richest person, the wealthiest woman and now the biggest dairy fortune.

Over the course of three generations, the secretive Besnier family has grown what began as an artisanal cheesemaking operation in northwestern France into Groupe Lactalis, one of the largest global food companies. 

The three siblings who own the closely held manufacturer — Jean-Michel, 55, Emmanuel, 52, and Marie, 42 — are now worth a combined $14.7bn (€13.4bn), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Their wealth eclipses the milk-based fortunes of Canada’s Lino Saputo and the US’s Jim Leprino, but remain far behind France’s top-ranking luxury tycoon Bernard Arnault, worth $205bn, and L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers at $94.7bn. 

The manufacturer has encountered difficulties passing on more than 20% higher costs despite significant efforts to raise competitiveness, Lactalis said. Still, the company highlighted it has become the world’s 10th-biggest food company by sales, just ahead of rival Danone and behind Heineken. 

The Besnier fortune illustrates the global reach of a clutch of France’s ultra-rich. For the Besniers, growth has also brought more scrutiny. Lactalis began publishing financial results in 2018, the year a crisis over salmonella-tainted baby formula put Emmanuel, the chief executive, in a political and media firestorm. 

In February, the company was charged for failure to recall, aggravated deception and involuntary injuries in France and ordered to set aside €600,000 pending the outcome of the case.

Pressure over inflation

In recent weeks, pressure has increased over inflation, with the French government encouraging food manufacturers to pass on lower commodity prices for their products. Inflation helped drive Lactalis revenue up 28% last year to €28.3bn, while higher costs pushed net profit down 14% to €384m and squeezed returns to 1.4%. 

Lactalis is working on undoing a reputation for being tight-fisted with farmers. It said it paid higher prices than competitors for milk last year in a bid to help producers combat inflation.

Lactalis has come a long way from 1933, when founder Andre Besnier made his first dozen or so camembert cheeses — 17 to be exact — using milk collected near his western hometown of Laval, where the company is still based. 

Lactalis climbed to the top of Rabobank’s Global Dairy Top 20 annual ranking in 2021, leapfrogging Nestlé, after agreeing to buy Kraft Heinz's natural cheese business. The French company did not get Philadelphia in the deal. 

• Bloomberg