Brazilian Roasting Giants Combine as Grupo 3corações Acquires Mitsui

Representatives of Grupo 3corações and Mitsui. Grupo 3corações press photo.

Two of the largest coffee companies in the world’s second-largest coffee-consuming country, Brazil, are combining, as Grupo 3corações (3C) is acquiring Mitsui Alimentos for approximately $48 million USD.

Owned by the Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co., Mitsui Alimentos has grown to become the fifth-largest coffee company in the country with 2019 total revenue of approximately $62 million, according to 3C. Mitsui’s leading brand in Brazil is Café Brasileiro, which was launched by a family of Japanese immigrants in 1959 before being acquired by the Japanese parent company in 1974.

Jointly owned by Israel’s Strauss Coffee and Brazil’s Sao Miguel FIP equity fund, 3C is now positioned as the largest coffee roasting company in Brazil, where domestic consumption is expected to climb this year to approximately 23.5 million 60-kilo bags.

Mitsui’s flagship domestic coffee brand in Brazil, Café Brasileiro.

Brazil trails only the European Union (46.2 million bags) and the United States (27.3 million) in annual coffee consumption, according to the latest data from the USDA’s foreign agriculture information network.

The acquisition follows numerous other high-dollar acquisitions from 3C over the past decade, including those of Fino Grão in 2012, Itamaraty in 2014, Cia Iguaçu in 2016 and Manaus in 2019. The company now controls dozens of coffee brands throughout Brazil that are primarily catering to the roasted-and-ground, soluble and capsule segments.

According to 3C, Mitsui Alimentos’s coffee green beans export business will remain under the control of Mitsui & Co.