Total food industry deals for January 2020 worth $665.89m were announced globally, according to GlobalData’s deals database.

The value marked a decrease of 88.1% over the previous month and a drop of 76.4% when compared with the last 12-month average of $2.82bn.

In terms of number of deals, the sector saw a drop of 17.9% over the last 12-month average with 55 deals against the average of 67 deals.

In value terms, North America led the activity with deals worth $424.07m.

Food industry deals in January 2020: Top deals

The top five food deals accounted for 88.4% of the overall value during January 2020.

The combined value of the top five food deals stood at $588.66m, against the overall value of $665.89m recorded for the month.

The top five food industry deals of January 2020 tracked by GlobalData were:

• Green Monday, Qatar Investment Authority and Temasek Holdings (HK)’s $225m venture financing of Califia Farms
• The $161m venture financing of Memphis Meats by Bill Gates, Cargill, CPT Capital, Fifty Years Fund, Finistere Ventures, Future Ventures, Kimbal Musk, Norwest Venture Partners, Richard Branson, SoftBank Group, Temasek Holdings (Private), Threshold Ventures. and Tyson Foods
• SEA Diner Holdings’ $130m acquisition of Del Monte Philippines
• The $40.66m acquisition of Shanghai Ground Food Tech by China Mengniu Dairy
• 301,(US), Almanac Investments, CPT Capital, Greenleaf Foods, New Crop Capital, Rocana Venture Partners and Stray Dog Capital’s venture financing of SeaCo Foods International for $32m.