Danone’s Near-€1bn Huel Deal Follows a £254m Revenue Rise

By Olivia Hart

Danone agreed in March 2026 to acquire Huel for close to €1 billion, after the meal brand posted £254 million in annual revenue. More than 600 million meals had been sold over the company’s first decade, and its latest pretax profit rose 40% to £19.4 million.

Revenue rose 19%, while pretax profit increased 40%, producing a roughly 7.6% pretax margin. Profit therefore grew more than twice as fast as sales, a clearer sign of economic quality than revenue alone.

The meal sold convenience, not just taste

Hearn brought in registered nutritionist James Collier to formulate what became Huel — “human fuel.” The plant-based powder contained protein, carbohydrates, fats, fibre, essential vitamins and minerals, and could be prepared quickly and stored for long periods. Huel marketed it as “complete food.”

That proposition solved a practical problem: precise meal tracking worked on paper, but it was awkward for office, building-site and taxi workers. Huel shifted the work upstream, making nutrition a standardized powder rather than a daily measurement exercise.

Its rise coincided with subscription commerce, online fitness culture and digitally native challenger brands. Unlike conventional brands competing on taste, packaging, shelf position and habit, Huel sold saved time.

Direct sales created the operating engine

Huel sold through its own website, avoiding supermarket buyers and retaining the customer relationship. It knew who bought, what they ordered, when they reordered and how product or marketing changes affected demand. It could test advertising digitally, update its site quickly and communicate through its own forum.

Owning that relationship could improve margins while producing data and repeat purchasing. Huel’s forum customers, known as Hueligans, supplied loyalty and continuous product feedback. Danone identified the company’s digital execution and direct-to-consumer operation among its strongest assets.

As European ecommerce expanded, consumers grew more comfortable buying directly from brands. Huel had years of practice converting that digital attention into recurring revenue.

A two-order launch in a garage

Huel went live on June 17, 2015, and received two orders on its first day. Hearn printed labels, packed the boxes in a Buckinghamshire garage and drove them to the post office, working as marketer, warehouse employee, customer-service department and founder. He posted links on forums, emailed early customers to ask why they bought and sometimes hand-delivered local orders.

Professionalization preserved founder control

Before Huel, Hearn worked in marketing linked to Tesco, Waitrose and Starbucks. He put £1,500 into online voucher-code company Mash Up Media in 2008; within three years, it produced more than £2.5 million in annual profit, and he sold it to Internet Brands in 2011. He then built Bodyhack around nutrition programs before applying it to Huel.

At roughly £9 million in revenue, Hearn concluded he was becoming an obstacle to Huel’s next stage. He searched for executives, contacted James McMaster and brought him in as chief executive in 2017, then moved toward the founder and chief marketing role. McMaster took on HR, finance, legal and administration. Revenue subsequently rose from £9 million to more than £200 million.

Growth carried little institutional capital

Huel reached a roughly £40 million annual revenue run rate before taking its first major outside funding. Highland Europe invested £20 million in 2018 at a valuation of about £220 million, followed by another round at a substantially higher valuation that included Idris and Sabrina Elba. The company therefore scaled with relatively little institutional capital compared with peers of similar size.

Retail reach widened the addressable market

Retail expansion began with ready-to-drink Huel, which made the product easier to understand on a shelf. Powders were followed by bottled meals, Black Edition, Hot & Savoury, protein products, bars and supplements. In the US, Huel expanded into Target, Costco, Whole Foods, GNC and Sprouts, while its operations also extended across continental Europe.

Britain remained its largest market, with latest annual sales rising 26.5% to £139.3 million. US turnover increased 12.4% to £75.4 million, and Huel said its products were available in more than 17,000 UK stores and more than 100,000 stocking points. The omnichannel shift layered retail reach over its existing digital customer base rather than replacing it.

What does the sale change for Huel?

For Huel, the answer is manufacturing capacity, research and distribution. The deal would give it Danone’s global production infrastructure, R&D capability and access to more than 120 markets, assets that would take years to build organically. Danone, in return, gets the brand, younger consumers, a fast-growing complete-nutrition category, digital capabilities it cannot replicate internally and room for international expansion.

Timing matters for Danone’s portfolio strategy under Antoine de Saint-Affrique. Investors had previously removed former chief executive Emmanuel Faber after questioning whether Danone balanced purpose and sustainability with financial performance. Huel fits the more disciplined emphasis on functional nutrition, premium positioning and growth.

The sequence of who first approached whom has not been publicly disclosed. Any dramatic takeover narrative would therefore be invention.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority cleared the proposed acquisition in August, removing the principal British regulatory obstacle. Like Vinted’s rise from European disruptor to multibillion-euro retailer, Huel shows how an incumbent can buy rather than recreate a challenger’s customer engine.

The next test is operational: Danone must convert Huel’s direct-sales data into wider distribution while preserving the community behind repeat purchases. For Huel, the payoff comes only if global manufacturing improves availability and product development without diluting the simplicity that made the brand work.