Darling Ingredients
Texas-based Darling Ingredients Inc. transforms animal by-products and used cooking oil into valuable commodities.
Founded
1882Texas-based Darling Ingredients Inc. transforms animal by-products and used cooking oil into valuable commodities.
Darling Ingredients is positioned to benefit from growing demand for low-carbon fuels, collagen-based health and wellness ingredients, and sustainable animal nutrition. The Diamond Green Diesel joint venture with Valero is expanding into sustainable aviation fuel, with the Port Arthur facility approved to upgrade roughly half of its 470-million-gallon annual capacity to SAF.
In the Food segment, the Nextida joint venture with Tessenderlo Group would combine Darling's Rousselot collagen and gelatin business with PB Leiner to create an approximately $1.5 billion revenue company focused on functional health ingredients. Analysts expect these trends, alongside improved renewable diesel economics and core rendering margins, to support earnings growth through 2026.
Darling Ingredients benefits from a vertically integrated, global rendering network that collects and processes animal by-products and used cooking oil across more than 260 facilities in over 15 countries. The company processes approximately 15% of the world's animal by-products, giving it scale-driven feedstock cost and supply advantages.
Its circular-economy model diversifies revenue across three segments: Feed ingredients, Food ingredients led by Rousselot collagen and gelatin, and Fuel through the Diamond Green Diesel joint venture with Valero, one of the world's largest producers of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. This integration allows Darling to redirect fats, proteins and oils to their highest-value end markets while reducing waste and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Darling Ingredients operates as a commodity-processing and specialty-ingredients business, pricing products based on global fat, protein and used-cooking-oil markets, while capturing premiums in higher-value channels such as collagen, gelatin, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel.
The company uses long-term offtake and joint-venture structures to share capital risk and stabilize returns; the 50/50 Diamond Green Diesel venture with Valero and the 85%/15% Nextida collagen joint venture with Tessenderlo Group are examples of partnerships that expand capacity without full balance-sheet exposure.