Fuertes Buys Nutrave and Builds a Chicken Belt

Grupo Fuertes bought Toledo poultry processor Nutrave on October 9, 2026, adding a second Spanish chicken plant months after it entered the trade. Terms were not disclosed. The Murcia holding, parent of ElPozo Alimentación, said the three founding families will stay in the capital and that the whole workforce will stay on.

Fuertes cast the purchase as a block on foreign buyers who have already taken Spanish chicken firms. The plant it bought in Bargas already runs the slow-growth Imperial line and a prepared range of nuggets, fillets, burgers and wings, the sort of pack ElPozo knows how to put on a refrigerated shelf.

Nutrave Runs Feed, Farms and a Slaughter Line

Nutrave was founded in 2002 by several families with a background in poultry, and it still works as a single integrated processor rather than a cut-up trader. The industrial site covers 100,000 square metres, of which 20,000 square metres are buildings, on the CM-4003 at Bargas, south of Madrid.

WHAT SITS ON THE BARGAS SITE

• Feed mill: The company mixes its own rations, including a fully plant-based feed for the Imperial line.
• Hatchery and farms: It incubates birds and runs growing sheds for chickens and a separate hen flock.
• Processing hall: Slaughter, cutting and packing for fresh meat and prepared products share the Toledo site.
• Own fleet: Distribution is handled with company trucks rather than a third-party haulier.

Company pages put the payroll at more than 170 people, with a stated floor of 50% women and more than ten nationalities on the floor. Fuertes said it will keep that staff and use the same handover model it applied on earlier buys.

NUTRAVE AT A GLANCE

• 2024 sales: 62.70 million euros, from accounts filed at Spain’s Registro Mercantil.
• 2024 profit: 3.59 million euros in the same filing.
• Weekly reach: Nutrave says its chicken reaches more than 20,000 households a week, whole or in parts.
• Star line: Imperial Chicken is a slow-growth bird sold under that brand, alongside hen meat and prepared cuts.

For a group that booked 2,772.9 million euros of sales in 2025, up 8.3%, the Toledo company is a bolt-on, not a merger of equals. Fuertes profit in that year was 333.7 million euros, up 48%, with the food arm and a property division both contributing. Some 82% of group sales were booked in Spain.

Fuertes Tied Albacete to Toledo in 71 Days

Chicken is new to this holding. Fuertes already reared pigs and cattle, processed turkey at Procavi in Seville, and packed cheese, water and wine. It had to buy its way into broiler meat after a failed run at Uvesa, the Navarre poultry group that later went to Ukraine’s MHP.

Spain’s competition authority cleared the next attempt on June 26, 2026, granting exclusive control of the Albacete pair Tolosa y Valiente and Productos Alimenticios Albacete, the firms behind Tolvasa and Paasa. Fuertes announced that entry on July 30. Seventy-one days later it added Nutrave, putting a Toledo slaughter hall next to the Albacete chain in the same region.

FUERTES PROTEIN DEALS IN 2026

On September 15 the Albacete companies swapped boards. Tomás Fuertes Fernández, Augusto Fuertes Gómez and Juana Fuertes Fernández took solidary administration, a family slate in place of the Valiente and Tolosa councils. That is the template Bargas has now signed: the old names stay around the table, and the Murcia family holds the pen.

Who Already Owns Spain’s Biggest Chicken Firms?

Fuertes put the foreign question in the same statement as the Nutrave buy. Large international operators have purchased Spanish chicken companies in recent months, it said, and three of the ten largest operators in the country are already in foreign hands. Its two poultry purchases in 2026, it argued, keep production with Spanish family firms.

The largest of those foreign moves is already closed. MHP, the London-listed Ukrainian poultry group, signed for a first block of Uvesa shares on March 20, 2025, and later took its holding to 91.77%. Uvesa then agreed in March 2026 to buy Payán Hermanos, a Granada-area processor founded in 1953, extending a foreign-controlled Spanish champion rather than shrinking it.

The Dutch group Plukon has been building a separate Spanish chain since it bought VMR in 2020. On May 27, 2026, it bought Madrid and Toledo processor Avimosa outright. Avimosa posted 56 million euros of sales in 2025 and employs more than 250 people, with plants aimed at the Madrid ring, the same central belt Nutrave serves from Bargas.

This acquisition further strengthens our position in central Spain, enhances our vertical integration, including local feed and poultry production, and accelerates our ability to deliver high-value poultry products to retail and foodservice customers across the Iberian Peninsula.

Kees Kraijenoord, CEO, Plukon Food Group, May 27, 2026

Plukon’s Spanish slaughter volume was already above 121,000 tonnes in 2025, with sales above 350 million euros, before Avimosa. That is the buyer Fuertes is talking about when it talks about foreigners, and it is shopping in the same postcode as Nutrave.

Imperial Birds Take 56 Days, Then the Nugget Line

ElPozo’s skill is not a live bird. It is a branded pack: sliced, breaded, frozen, export-ready. Nutrave gives it both ends of that job in chicken. Fresh meat still moves under the Imperial name. The same site also lists hamburgers, nuggets, goujons, burger products and barbecue wings, which is the SKU set a processed-meats sales force can carry without learning a new trade.

Imperial is not a commodity broiler. Nutrave’s pages describe slow-growth birds never under 56 days, fed on 65% cereals and a 100% plant-based ration, with SGS certification across incubation, rearing, feed, transport, cutting and packing. That is a premium claim a pork brand can print next to its existing welfare and traceability language.

Fuertes already talks about chicken as a “strategic” consumption category and about integration as the way it keeps quality, food safety and animal welfare in one ledger. That is the same vertical script the CNMC recorded when it looked at Tolvasa and Paasa: feed, hatch, grow, kill, cut, sell. Nutrave does not change the script. It duplicates it one province west, with a prepared-food hall attached.

Three Founding Families Remain as Shareholders

Fuertes did not say what share the Toledo families keep, or for how long. It said they will accompany the Fuertes family through the transition, a formula that also appeared around the ham purchase. No price, no earn-out, no put option was published.

are an important counterweight: they keep production in the hands of Spanish family businesses.

Grupo Fuertes, company statement, October 9, 2026

That sentence does a lot of political work. Nutrave remains a Spanish company. It also becomes a unit inside a Murcia conglomerate whose 2025 accounts still list property and, in the group’s own description, interests beyond food. The families stay on the register. They are no longer the only names on it.

Local coverage of the buy treated the jobs promise as the news that mattered in Bargas. There was little public argument about nationality on the day the deal landed, because the argument sits with owners and with retailers, not with people buying a tray of thighs. The plant’s mix of nationalities on the line already told that story more quietly than any statement about Spanish capital.

Pork, Turkey and Ham Were Already in the House

Chicken is the missing protein, not the first. ElPozo is still the weight inside the holding, and in its own July figures international markets were 19% of that company’s sales. Procavi already supplied turkey. Cefusa handles livestock. Fripozo, Aquadeus and the cheese and wine lines sit beside them. The September ham move was a capacity buy, not a brand launch.

HOW THE PROTEIN FILE FILLED

1. March 20, 2025: MHP signs for a first block of Uvesa, closing the door Fuertes had tried to walk through.
2. June 26, 2026: The CNMC authorises Fuertes’ exclusive control of Tolvasa and Paasa, with only limited overlaps.
3. July 30, 2026: Fuertes announces the Albacete chicken entry, its first broiler platform.
4. September 7, 2026: Jamones Albarracín joins, with room to cure up to 4 million pieces and 3.82 million cured in 2025, up 13%, and about 155 staff kept on.
5. October 9, 2026: Nutrave is acquired, and Fuertes repeats the family-and-jobs formula in Toledo.

Albarracín will keep curing ham for other clients, Fuertes said, while it funds more drying rooms. Nutrave is different. It is not a maquila hall. It is a branded and wholesale chicken business that can feed ElPozo’s existing cold-chain and export desk, which is why the prepared line is the part of the plant that matches the buyer.

Polish Fillets Still Cross the Border

Owning Bargas does not stop a truck from Poland. Import tallies put Poland at 33.3% of Spain’s poultry-meat import value in 2024, and at 39.4% in the first ten months of 2025. Brazil held 12.0% of that 2024 import value, then lost access to the wider EU market on September 3, 2026, after Brussels said it lacked guarantees on antimicrobial rules. Brazil’s agriculture ministry later said an EU audit had cleared the technical file, with remaining steps still due on October 20 and 21, 2026.

Spanish broiler output has been the steadier EU story, with less of the swing that hit Polish sheds this summer. That is the production Fuertes is buying: domestic birds, domestic feed, a domestic pack. It is not a tariff wall. Cheap intra-EU fillet can still set the price on the next aisle while Imperial sits in a slower, dearer niche.

Foreign groups can keep shopping for the next family plant. Independent Spanish processors now sit between a funded Murcia roll-up in Castile-La Mancha and Dutch and Ukrainian owners who have already shown they will pay for slaughter capacity. Fuertes has the second chicken site it wanted. It does not have Uvesa, and it does not have the import dock.

In Albacete the old boards are already gone. In Bargas the three families still have to live that handover, on a site that will keep killing birds this week under the same roof, with more than 170 people still clocking in and a Murcia holding now writing the plan for the nugget line.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Was Nutrave Founded, and Who Started It?

Nutrave started in 2002. Its own pages present it as the work of several families with a poultry background, and a local company listing describes that ownership as a third generation in agro-food businesses. Fuertes has not named the families in its statement, only that all three remain shareholders through the transition.

What Prepared Foods Does Nutrave List Besides Fresh Chicken?

Alongside Imperial and bulk hen meat, the company lists hamburgers, chicken nuggets and goujons as prepared items it develops for clients, plus burger products and barbecue wings. Those SKUs are packed at the same Bargas site as the fresh line, which is why the buy reads as a processed-meats add-on rather than a farm-only deal.

Did Spain’s Competition Authority Review the Nutrave Purchase?

The public CNMC file on Fuertes and chicken is C/1686/26, the June 2026 clearance of Tolvasa and Paasa, which the authority said created only limited overlaps and no portfolio effects. No equivalent public ruling on Nutrave had been posted with that file. Deal value was not disclosed, so it is not clear from the published record whether this second buy crossed a notification threshold.

Where Is the Nutrave Plant, and How Is Imperial Chicken Fed?

The plant is at Carretera CM-4003, 12, 45593 Bargas, in the province of Toledo. Imperial birds are described as slow-growth stock kept at least 56 days, on a ration that is 65% cereals and free of animal-derived ingredients, with SGS certification cited for the full cycle from hatch to pack.