For years, venture capital was synonymous with bets on technological start-ups, renewable energies or disruptive innovations applied to biomedicine. With a more aggressive profile than that of traditional investment, these vehicles pursued what is known in financial jargon as unicorns: young, unique, high-growth companies, with successive rounds of financing and multimillion-dollar exits. Without abandoning that territory, private equity funds are expanding their focus towards more prosaic sectors: industrial food, animal health, urban services or domestic goods. The latest SpainCap report shows that the bulk of investment in 2025 corresponded to traditional private equity, with special prominence from the so-called middle market: medium-sized companies, many of an industrial or family nature. Foreign capital represented 63.8% of the total, a “record figure”, which confirms the international dimension of interest in the Spanish business fabric. The Global Private Markets Report 2026 by McKinsey & Company points out that value creation increasingly depends on operational improvement and financial discipline and less on future growth expectations. Although the monetary environment has eased, the sector operates far from the era of ultra-cheap money that skyrocketed tech valuations. Predictability is once again on the rise. From the bosses’ point of view, the movement is interpreted as an adaptation to the environment. David Martín, vice president of SpainCap and head of private equity in Spain and Portugal at Tikehau Capital, remembers that sectors such as food, traditional industry or services have historically been “investment drivers” due to their consolidation opportunities. However, he admits that in the current environment there may be «a greater shift towards some of these sectors due to their defensive nature and uncorrelated nature of the economic cycle.» In his opinion, funds that invest in more mature companies “will undoubtedly look for stable and predictable flows”, in a stage marked by “industrial relocation and capex investment cycles” that are reinforcing industrial and services consolidation in Spain and attracting foreign capital.
Cyclical factors
Santiago Carbó, professor of Economics at CUNEF, believes that the phenomenon combines structural and cyclical factors. “Private capital has been moving towards everyday consumption sectors for some time because they have relatively stable cash flows, allow growth through consolidation and, in some ways, are more operable than other purely financial investments,” he explains. Added to this is “a certain aging of businessmen and a certain fragmentation of markets.” In his opinion, the current environment of low rates and high liquidity accelerates a previous phenomenon: “There is a lot of liquidity and it is easy to raise valuations, which encourages the activity of private capital, which with higher rates tends to be more selective.” The movement is visible in specific operations. Nuzoa, a leading distributor of animal health products and services in Spain and Portugal, was born in 2020 under the impetus of Abac Capital and, after 13 acquisitions, was purchased by the French fund PAI Partners. More than a one-off bet, the case illustrates the attractiveness of a fragmented market with the capacity for European consolidation. In consumption the logic is similar. ProA Capital has taken positions in Pastas Gallo or La Casa de las Carcasas and recently acquired Acrylicos Vallejo, a manufacturer of modeling paints. According to the manager, the operation seeks to “promote the growth and internationalization of the company.” The consumer products segment concentrated around 16% of the capital invested by private equity and venture capital (investing in newly created companies) in 2025, placing food and everyday goods among the relevant destinations of a capital that seeks growth platforms. At the beginning of the year, One Rock Capital bought Europe Snacks, a European manufacturer of salty snacks with a presence in the United Kingdom, France and Spain – among other products, white label potato chips for Mercadona. The asset is not the potato, but the industrial structure capable of integrating white label, pan-European distribution and economies of scale. The same logic extends to urban services. Asterion Industrial Partners has built a network of parking lots and assets linked to waste recovery, trying to take advantage of recurring cash flows in essential sectors. The pattern repeats itself: atomized sectors, medium-sized companies and room for consolidation. The strategy is known as buy & build: acquire a platform company and add smaller competitors. In 2025, operations of between 10 and 100 million will exceed 3,000 million euros. It is in that intermediate space where private capital finds fertile ground to consolidate everyday businesses. The debate is inevitable. Defenders of the model argue that the funds provide capital, professionalization and internationalization. Critics warn of the risk of progressive concentration in essential sectors. Carbó does not doubt that private capital helps companies without size projection grow, but insists that the effect is not neutral. “We are a country of SMEs and SMEs cannot always afford growth policies,” he points out. Although it recognizes that scale provides standardization, logistics, branding, access to financing and talent, it also “limits competition.” From the regulator’s perspective, CNMC sources emphasize that the entry of funds «is not problematic per se» and a systematic deterioration in competition is not observed, although they recognize that certain strategies can generate increases in concentration at the local level or in specific segments.
