On 10 June 2026 Molinos Río de la Plata filed a one-page notice with Argentina’s securities regulator, the CNV, and the Buenos Aires exchanges. It said Molinos had agreed with The Not Company SpA to buy “100% del capital social y votos de The Not Company S.A.S.”, the entity that sells NotCo-branded food and drink in Argentina and Uruguay, subject to “ciertas condiciones y autorizaciones usuales”. It is the only regulatory filing in NotCo’s retreat from Latin America, and it contains no price.
Three months later the pattern is complete enough to read. Since 2024, the company that raised $235 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in July 2021 has stopped running its own food business in the United States and Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Chile is the last market it manages directly, and Diario Financiero’s sources say it has until the end of the year to show a profit or be sold, possibly “desmembrada por categorías de producto” — broken up by product category — for want of a buyer for the whole.
None of the four exits disclosed a consideration. That is the finding. A company that published its valuation to the dollar on the way up has published nothing on the way out, and the trade coverage has not asked why.
The four exits, side by side
| Market | Date | Counterparty | Form | What was disclosed | What was not |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States and Canada | 2024, confirmed February 2025 | The Kraft Heinz Not Company LLC (JV formed February 2022) | Kraft Heinz “will now take over the sale and marketing” (Muchnick to Bloomberg, per Just Food); JV “now the primary vehicle” | New York office closed; profitability target moved from 2025 to 2027 | Terms of the consolidation; NotCo’s economic interest in the JV |
| Mexico | Around March 2026 (DF sources) | None | Closure “sin comprador ni comunicado público”, for “malos resultados” (DF sources) | Import market supplied from Chile, Brazil and the US; office and local team existed | Never announced by the company; Emol notes it “no ha sido confirmada por la empresa” |
| Argentina and Uruguay | 10 June 2026 | Molinos Río de la Plata S.A. (Pérez Companc family) | Share sale of 100% of The Not Company S.A.S., CNV notice | Subject to customary conditions; team retained (DF, by contrast with Brazil); operation “estaría en punto de equilibrio” (DF sources) | Price; whether closing has occurred |
| Brazil | Announced 7–8 September 2026 | “Ferrara”, described by NotCo as an investment group with food brands in Brazil and the US | Sale of the Brazilian operation, announced on LinkedIn | 30 staff in São Paulo on contracts to end-September, not transferred (DF sources) | Price; the acquirer’s legal identity; what assets beyond the brand changed hands |
Two secondary facts frame the table. Diario Financiero reports headcount at a peak of “más de 300 personas” and today “no sobrepasarían las 100”, after roughly 20 redundancies at the end of July in R&D, kitchen, AI and marketing roles in Chile and the United States. Just Food, citing a company spokesperson, recorded an earlier cut of about 11% of the workforce in November 2023.
What the 2021 round bought, and what remains
The Business Wire release of 26 July 2021 is worth rereading against the table. It described a company operating “in five countries”, selling “in more than 6,000 retailers globally”, with NotMilk “on track to reach 8,000 retail doors” in the US by year end, “the fastest-growing food tech company” in Latin America, and expansion plans for “Europe and Asia”. It said NotCo had “raised more than $350 million to date”, including an $85 million Series C nine months earlier. Investors named in the round include Tiger Global, DFJ Growth, ZOMA Lab, Bezos Expeditions, Enlightened Hospitality Investments, Future Positive, L Catterton and Kaszek.
Five years on, the food business exists in one country under NotCo’s own management. The Kraft Heinz venture continues in North America, and the Argentine and Brazilian brands continue under Molinos and Ferrara. What NotCo retains from the 2021 thesis is the part the release led with: Giuseppe, the formulation software, now licensed to large food companies. Green Queen lists Nestlé, Barry Callebaut, PepsiCo, Mars and Mondelēz as clients; the Barry Callebaut partnership was announced by press release in November 2025 and the others we have not independently confirmed.
Practical consequence: a plant-based brand’s value on exit is what a local food group will pay for a shelf position and a frozen-category share — Molinos’s own statement singles out “su negocio de congelados”. The AI platform that justified a $1.5 billion valuation was not part of any of the four transactions, which is the clearest available statement of where the company now thinks its value sits.
Why the absence of a price is the story
There are three ordinary reasons a private seller keeps a price quiet, and each tells a different story here.
The first is that the number is small relative to what was raised. Molinos’s statement frames NotCo Argentina as a brand that “aporta credenciales de innovación” — a marketing asset — and its own strategic rationale is expanding “las ocasiones de consumo”, not acquiring technology or capacity. That is the language of a bolt-on, not a transformative deal. DF’s sources put the Argentine business at breakeven, which sets a ceiling on what a buyer pays for it.
The second is that the deals are not all sales. Mexico closed. The North American consolidation transferred sales and marketing to a joint-venture partner that, per Just Food, is also “overseeing the supply chain”; NotCo’s spokesperson called it a “strategic decision to consolidate its operational efforts”. Whether money moved in either direction was never stated.
The third is that Brazil, the largest market in the region, sold without its team. DF reports 30 staff on contracts to the end of September and, unlike Argentina, no retention. A brand sale that excludes the people who ran it is a licence-and-inventory transaction in substance, and those are rarely large.
Set against the sector, this fits the pattern we have been tracking. Our count of acquirers found that the buyers of alt-protein assets in 2026 are mostly small peers and regional food groups, not strategics paying up; Molinos and Ferrara are the latter. Our funding analysis of 8 September found that outside Europe, private investment in the category fell about 63% in the first half of 2026. NotCo’s four exits all sit in that “rest of world” residual. Green Queen’s running tally counts more than 85 companies acquired, merged, bankrupt or closed in 24 months — a figure whose definitional problems we set out in August, but whose direction nobody disputes.
The Chilean case is the one to watch
The home market carries three separate pressures, all documented.
The first is financial. DF’s sources describe the Chilean operation as loss-making with a deadline of year-end to demonstrate profitability. The internal expectation if it fails is a sale, and because no buyer has emerged for the whole, a break-up by category.
The second is legal. In May 2026 Chile’s Supreme Court closed a five-year case brought by the Los Ríos dairy producers’ association, Aproval. Green Queen’s account of the ruling: the court left the NotMilk trademark intact but ordered the company to remove the word “milk” and dairy imagery from packaging and marketing, finding it had “engaged in acts of unfair competition”. Muchnick said the company would make “a couple of changes that correspond”. A relabel of the flagship product lands in the same six months as the profitability deadline.
The third is physical. DF reports that the Quilín operations centre in Santiago will be partly sublet as headcount falls, and that the San Francisco office runs a minimal operation.
Practical consequence: for anyone holding NotCo paper, or supplying it, the December deadline is the date that matters. For anyone acquiring a plant-based brand in Latin America, the relevant comparables are now three transactions with undisclosed prices, and the seller’s own statements say the operations were at or below breakeven.
The case that this is a success
The company’s framing deserves to be stated properly, because parts of it hold.
Muchnick called the Molinos deal “una enorme validación del camino que NotCo viene construyendo” and said NotCo Argentina had found “una nueva casa”. On Brazil, the company’s LinkedIn statement said the sale “reconoce el valor y el camino construido en estos seis años” and that the brand had “conquistar a millones de consumidores brasileños que hoy la eligen a diario”. On the NotMilk ruling he said “The brand remains intact.”
The stronger version of the argument is structural. A company that discovered its product development software had more takers than its milk has done what a rational owner does: sold the capital-intensive, low-margin retail business market by market to owners with local distribution, and kept the asset with licensing economics. The 2021 release itself said the technology “will eventually enable NotCo to be a powering tool for food and beverage innovation partnering with other companies”. On that reading the exits are the plan, not its failure, and the missing prices are just private-company discretion.
Two things weigh against it. The 2025 profitability timeline, given to Bloomberg by the CEO, had Chile and Argentina profitable by the second quarter of 2025 and Mexico and Brazil in 2026. Mexico closed for poor results instead; Brazil, per DF’s sources, “nunca logró la rentabilidad”; Chile is loss-making with a deadline. The plan, as stated 19 months ago, did not survive contact. And a pivot that was the plan would normally be announced as one. The Mexico closure was not announced at all.
What we could not establish
- Any consideration for the Kraft Heinz consolidation, the Molinos sale or the Ferrara sale. None was disclosed by any party. The CNV notice is silent; Molinos is listed in Buenos Aires and may disclose the amount in its financial statements if it is material to it.
- Whether the Molinos transaction has closed. The 10 June notice made it conditional. DF’s June report expected “las próximas semanas”. We found no closing notice.
- Who Ferrara is. NotCo’s statement, as reported by DF, Emol and Green Queen, describes an investment group with food brands in Brazil and the United States. We could not identify a registered entity, and Green Queen’s URL spells the name “Ferrera” while its text says “Ferrara”. We use the company’s spelling as reported by the Chilean press.
- The Mexico closure. It rests on Diario Financiero’s sources. Emol notes the company has not confirmed it, and Green Queen writes “reportedly”. NotCo declined to comment to DF.
- Current headcount. The figure of no more than 100 is sourced to DF; the company has not published a number.
- NotCo’s economic interest in the Kraft Heinz joint venture after the 2024 consolidation. Neither party has disclosed it in the sources we read.
- The AI licensing client list beyond Barry Callebaut, which is the only one we traced to a press release.
What to watch
- 31 December 2026. If NotCo announces a Chilean sale, in whole or by category, in the first quarter of 2027, DF’s sourcing was right and the last owned food market goes the way of the other four. If it reports a profit instead, the retreat stopped at the border.
- Molinos’s next financial statements. If the NotCo purchase appears with a value, it is the first disclosed number for a NotCo food-business exit and a comparable for every other Latin American plant-based brand.
- NotMilk packaging in Chile. The Supreme Court ordered changes; when the relabelled carton appears, and what it is called, is a visible test of the ruling’s reach.
- Whether any of the AI licensing partners beyond Barry Callebaut confirms a contract in its own materials. That would put a floor under the pivot thesis that the food exits cannot.