Registry
Does Tnuva support Israel?
Yes — Tnuva has documented support for Israel on record, including $277,700 in donations. Every claim below links to its source.
Filed under: Food & beverage brands · Companies that support Israel
Background
Tnuva is the clearest case in Israeli food of why ownership and action have to be judged separately. The company is as Israeli as a company gets — a 1926 cooperative of kibbutzim and moshavim that became the country's dominant dairy — yet since 2015 its controlling shareholder has been Bright Food, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, with an Israeli minority partner. The wartime donations recorded here were made by the Israeli operating company and its Israeli staff, not by Beijing: 400 tonnes of food to soldiers, patients and evacuees in the first week of the October 2023 war, and over ILS 1 million in December 2024 for sports rehabilitation of the war's wounded. Tnuva also appears in the settlement-monitoring literature: Who Profits, an advocacy research centre, documents settlement-sourced milk from named West Bank and Golan settlement dairy farms, 'Tnuva GO' gym sponsorships in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, and a long-running series of Israel Police and Prison Service food-supply tenders (documented 2018-2025, with a comparable predecessor contract reported independently in 2007) — ordinary paid government-procurement contracts, not donations. No cash donation by Tnuva to the Israeli military itself was found in this pass.
The Times of Israel ICE (Hebrew) Who Profits — The Land of Milk and Money
Timeline of documented support
Documented support
| Type | Date | Amount | Recipient | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operations in Israel | 1926 | — | State of Israel (taxes, employment, national dairy and food supply) Tnuva is Israel's largest food manufacturer and by far its largest dairy. Founded in 1926 as a marketing cooperative for the kibbutzim and moshavim, it ran as an agricultural cooperative for its first seventy years and today accounts for roughly 70% of the Israeli dairy market alongside major meat, egg and packaged-food businesses — a position that led Israel's antitrust authority to declare it a monopoly. Control passed to the private-equity firm Apax Partners and the Israeli investor Meir Shamir (Mivtach Shamir) in 2008 in a deal valuing it at about $1.025 billion. | |
| Acquisition | 2015-03 | — | Bright Food (Group) Co., Ltd. — Chinese state-owned buyer; sellers Apax Partners and Mivtach Shamir Tnuva's controlling shareholder is Bright Food, China's second-largest food manufacturer and a Chinese state-owned enterprise. The sale-and-purchase agreement was signed in May 2014 and closed in March 2015: Bright Food bought the controlling stake from the Apax funds and from Mivtach Shamir, at a company valuation of more than ILS 8 billion (about $2.5 billion). Reporting of the size of the stake differs by the entity measured — press coverage at the time described it as about 56% of Tnuva, while the transaction's Israeli legal counsel described it as 77% of Tnuva Group's holding company; Mivtach Shamir retained a substantial minority (about 26% as of 2017). Attribution note: Tnuva is an Israeli company operating in Israel; its majority owner is a Chinese state company, and neither party's actions should be attributed to the other. | |
| In-kind support | 2023-10-11 | — | IDF soldiers, wounded and hospitalised patients, and evacuated families in hospitals across Israel In the first week of the October 2023 war Tnuva donated about 400 tonnes of products — roughly 100,000 individual items — to Israeli soldiers, the wounded, hospital patients and staff and families of evacuees, including dairy items, hard cheese, drinks and yogurts, plus chicken schnitzel for soldiers; deliveries included Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. Dozens of Tnuva employees volunteered to pack and distribute the products and to fill picking and packing roles at distribution centres left short-staffed by reserve call-ups. Tnuva's corporate responsibility manager Neta Ben Menachem said the company stood with bereaved families, medical teams and soldiers, many of whom were Tnuva employees. Attributed to Tnuva the Israeli company, not to its Chinese majority owner Bright Food. | |
| Donation | 2024-12-17 | $277,700 | Atgarim (Israeli adventure-sports NGO) — rehabilitation sports groups for people wounded in the Iron Swords war In December 2024 Tnuva funded 'HaAtgaristim', dedicated sports groups to rehabilitate people wounded in the Iron Swords war, run with the veteran Israeli NGO Atgarim (founded in 1995 by a group of disabled IDF veterans and disabled civilians, and active since then in adventure sports for people with physical and mental disabilities). The programme covers sailing, kayaking, water-skiing, cycling, running, diving and rappelling at sites nationwide, with dietitian support supplied by Tnuva; Yarden Gerbi, the Olympic medallist who has fronted Tnuva's 'GO' sports-nutrition brand for the past four years, accompanies the initiative. Tnuva allocated over ILS 1 million (about $270,000 at roughly 3.7 ILS/USD) and promoted registration through a scannable code reprinted on every 'GO' yogurt lid. The dollar figure is a conversion of the reported shekel amount, which the company gave as a floor — "over one million shekels" — not an exact sum. The announcement is Tnuva's own, made by its marketing division under its own brand, and not an act of its majority owner, the Chinese state-owned Bright Food. | |
| Government contract | 2018 | ₪52,000,000 | Israel Police and Israel Prison Service (IPS) — Israeli government security services, via public procurement tenders Tnuva has repeatedly won Israeli government food-supply tenders for the police and the prison service. In 2007 its institutional-catering division, Tnuva Chef, won what was reported as Israel's largest-ever food tender to that date — about NIS 500 million over three years with an option for two more — to supply the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service (IPS), covering roughly 50,000 daily diners; reported by Haaretz and TheMarker at the time. Who Profits, an advocacy research centre that tracks Israeli companies operating in the occupied territories, documents that Tnuva Group has continued as a Police/IPS food contractor from 2018 through at least mid-2025: a five-year joint grocery tender worth NIS 52,000,000 (July 2018); a five-year meat, poultry, fish and frozen-food tender averaging about NIS 34,000,000 a year (September 2019 to September 2024); and a run of extensions and exemption-from-tender top-ups in 2023-2025, including NIS 22,000,000 to the IPS and NIS 6,000,000 to the Police (July 2023), a further NIS 9,000,000 to the Police (October 2023), a NIS 17,000,000 IPS tender (September 2024) and an NIS 800,000 IPS extension (May 2025). These are ordinary paid government-procurement contracts — Tnuva selling food to the Israeli police and prison authorities as a commercial vendor — not donations. Who Profits does not cite the underlying tender notices on its Tnuva page, so the specific 2018-2025 NIS figures are attributed to its research here rather than independently verified against the original tender documents; the general, long-running nature of the relationship is independently corroborated by the 2007 press coverage. | |
| Operations in Israel | 2025 | — | Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Syrian Golan (dairy-farm sourcing) and settlement neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem (gym sponsorships) Who Profits, an advocacy research centre that tracks corporate involvement in the Israeli occupation, documents that some of the raw milk Tnuva processes comes from dairy farms located inside Israeli settlements: in the West Bank's Jordan Valley (Almog, Shadmot Mehola, Kalia) and at Rosh Tzurim in the Gush Etzion bloc, plus a cluster of farms in the occupied Syrian Golan (Gshur, Kfar Haruv, Afik, Meitsar, Alumot, Yonatan, Ma'agan, Keshet, Kanaf, Ne'ot Golan, Giv'at Yo'av, Avnei Eitan, Ma'ale Gamla, Kidmat Tsvi). Separately, Who Profits documents that Tnuva's 'Tnuva GO' sports-nutrition brand sponsors gym complexes in West Bank settlements (Jordan Valley, Elkana, Alfei Menashe, Beit El, Givat Ze'ev) and in the East Jerusalem settlement neighbourhoods of Pisgat Ze'ev and Gilo. This is Who Profits' own direct documentation, presented without citation to underlying farm or sponsorship records; those primary records were not independently located in this pass, so the claim is attributed to Who Profits rather than verified against a farm-level or contract-level source. | One source |
| Donations total | $277,700 | |||
Frequently asked questions
Did Tnuva donate money to Israel or Israeli causes?
Yes. Documented donations total $277,700, including $277,700 to Atgarim (Israeli adventure-sports NGO) — rehabilitation sports groups for people wounded in the Iron Swords war. Each donation is listed on this page with its date and source.
How much has Tnuva given?
Documented donations total $277,700. The largest single recorded item is $277,700 to Atgarim (Israeli adventure-sports NGO) — rehabilitation sports groups for people wounded in the Iron Swords war (2024-12-17).
Where does this information come from?
Every record on this page links to its source — news reports, official company statements, tax filings, or government records. 12 distinct sources are cited for Tnuva. Our methodology page explains the full verification process.
Sources & citations
Record last updated: 2026-09-25
- Wikipedia — Tnuva en.wikipedia.org
- The Times of Israel timesofisrael.com
- Fischer (FBC & Co.) — deal counsel fbclawyers.com
- Apax Partners apax.com
- ICE (Hebrew) ice.co.il
- Walla Finance (Hebrew) finance.walla.co.il
- Walla Finance (Hebrew) finance.walla.co.il
- ice (Hebrew) — 17 Dec 2024 ice.co.il
- Who Profits — Tnuva Group profile whoprofits.org
- TheMarker (Hebrew, 2007) themarker.com
- Haaretz (Hebrew, 2007) haaretz.co.il
- Who Profits — The Land of Milk and Money whoprofits.org