Müller Buys Berief: What the Takeover Means for Everyone Who Shops Plant-Based

For forty years, Berief from Beckum was one of Germany's largest independent producers of plant-based foods. Since July 2026 that era is over: Berief Food GmbH now belongs entirely to Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller, the corporation behind Müllermilch. For anyone who shops plant-based, this is more than a footnote from the business press. Because Berief is also inside products that carry no Berief label at all.

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Who bought whom here

Berief, founded in 1985, most recently generated around 113 million euros in revenue with roughly 12 million euros EBITDA, according to its own press release. To fund expansion into the Benelux countries and Eastern Europe, the family company needed capital, evaluated minority stakes and partnerships by its own account, and ultimately chose a complete sale. Former owner Marcus Berief said: “I am handing the company and its employees into safe hands.” (Translated from German.)

The buyer plays in a different league: Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller ranks among the world's largest dairy companies according to the industry ranking of the German Dairy Association, and generated almost 10 billion euros in annual revenue according to Campact. Chairman Stefan Müller called the purchase an “important strategic step” to complement the group's activities in this “future market”, per Augsburger Allgemeine. UTM plans to invest in two additional filling lines in Beckum in the short term, per vegconomist.

You can read all this soberly: a dairy corporation is buying expertise in the very market that is taking share from its core category, as our analysis of the German plant-based market (in German) shows. The question is simply whose till rings along with every Berief oat drink from now on.

The brand universe: Müller is much more than Müllermilch

Anyone translating “avoid Müller” as “skip the Müllermilch” is underestimating the group considerably. According to the corporate website, the group's dairy brands include Weihenstephan, Sachsenmilch, Landliebe, Elinas, Lünebest, Biotiful Gut Health, Almhof, Loose, Harzbube and Bönsel, plus, in the fish, deli, dressings and sauces segment, Nordsee (retail products), Homann, Nadler, Hamker, Graal and Lisner. And since July, Berief, the group's first fully plant-based brand.

The private-label problem: Berief is also where its name is not

After the takeover became public, many people announced online that they would avoid Berief along with the Müller brands. Augsburger Allgemeine quotes one Reddit user: “Can't the AfD guy stop buying brands whose products I actually like?” (Translated.)

The trouble is: avoiding is not that simple. According to Augsburger Allgemeine, Berief, operating as Soja Food GmbH, also produces for private labels of drugstores, Aldi, Lidl and Edeka. The connection is traceable through the commercial register: SOJA Food GmbH in Beckum is registered at the Münster district court (HRB 16843), managing director: Marcus Berief.

An honest picture includes the limits of this finding. Which private-label products actually come from Beckum is not public; retailers rarely disclose their suppliers. And private-label manufacturers can change at any time: an oat drink made by Berief today may come from someone else in the next batch. A precisely targeted boycott is therefore practically impossible with private labels. That is exactly what makes this so unsatisfying for conscious shoppers: since July, anyone reaching for a cheap discounter plant drink can simply no longer rule out co-financing the Müller group.

The founder and the AfD: what is documented

Why do so many people react allergically to the Müller name? Step by step, and strictly along what is documented.

In autumn 2023, photos were published for the first time showing company founder Theo Müller with AfD leader Alice Weidel at a restaurant in Cannes. Müller subsequently made no secret of his stance: asked by Neue Zürcher Zeitung (1 February 2024) whether he was an interested observer or a sympathiser of the AfD, he answered: “Something in between.” In the same interview he suggested that the CDU in Saxony offer the AfD a coalition, a party that Saxony's domestic intelligence service classifies as proven right-wing extremist (the AfD is challenging this in court). He publicly calls Weidel a “friend”; according to Stern (20 January 2025), she said she could “very, very” well imagine “someone like Theo Müller” in a government led by her. Der Spiegel reported in 2025 on the guest list of Müller's 85th birthday, which included, besides Weidel, further guests with ties to far-right networks. In summer 2025, Müller had himself photographed at Weidel's side at the Bayreuth Festival.

Context that belongs here too: Theo Müller states that he has donated to the AfD neither personally nor through the company. The criticism is about public displays of sympathy and their signalling effect, not about proven payments.

How delicate this terrain is shows in a legal detail: Müller tried to have the campaign organisation Campact barred from saying he supports the AfD. Without success. It is court-confirmed that Campact may name Müller's AfD support. The organisation has since made its protest widely visible: over 2.2 million stickers, 28,000 posters in 14 cities, facade projections in eight cities. Market researcher Felix Leiendecker noted “continuous and significant image losses” for the Müller brand in Managermagazin, according to Campact.

Then there is the tax angle: according to Campact, Theo Müller moved to Switzerland years ago to avoid German inheritance tax (“I am being expropriated, robbed,” the organisation quotes him), and the group's headquarters sit in Luxembourg. All of that is legal. It just sits awkwardly with a corporation that lives off German infrastructure, German fridge shelves and German dairy farmers.

Speaking of dairy farmers: the contract terminations in Brandenburg

While the Berief takeover was underway, the group caused unease elsewhere: according to agrarheute/Bauernzeitung (25 August 2026), Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller has, per the Brandenburg farmers' association, terminated or declined to renew numerous milk supply contracts running until the end of March 2027. Affected, the association says, are “all farms north of Berlin” supplying the Leppersdorf plant, Europe's most modern dairy with an annual capacity of around 1.7 billion kilograms of milk.

As the reason, the farmers' association cites conversations with Müller field staff pointing to “considerably increased costs that stick to the tyre and the seat”, meaning transport costs. Müller itself initially did not comment, per the report. For the affected farms this means finding new buyers at short notice in an oversupplied milk market with already low farm-gate prices; industry observers expect worse conditions, according to agrarheute.

From our perspective, the core problem is deeper than any single termination, namely the system behind it: dairy farms depend on a few large processors, and when a corporation reorganises its supply area, the farms carry the risk. It is precisely the dependence that exit-support programmes for livestock farms aim to resolve, and one more reason we do not see the future in cow's milk. The numbers back this up: German drinking-milk consumption sits at a record low while plant drinks grow.

What to do with all this

We tell nobody what to buy. But transparency is the precondition for any conscious decision, hence this article. The state of play in short: anyone who prefers not to co-finance Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller needs to know the 16 further brands from our graphic besides Müllermilch, can no longer be certain since July who is behind private-label plant drinks at Aldi, Lidl, Edeka and drugstores, and will find alternatives with clear ownership among branded producers, for instance in our plant milk guide (in German).