Poultry group Moy Park, Northern Ireland’s largest private company, saw its sales rise 10.7 per cent last year to top £2 billion (€2.39 billion) for the first time, as households increasingly turned to chicken over more expensive meats amid the cost-of-living crisis.
Craigavon, Co Armagh-based Moy Park Limited’s net profit almost tripled to £55.8 million, helped by keeping a tight rein on costs in an inflationary environment, according to accounts filed this week with Companies House in the UK.
Job numbers across Moy Park, which operates nine processing plants in Northern Ireland, England and France, fell by 660 to 8,636 as it reduced the capacity of a plant in Derbyshire in England.
The company supplies supermarkets and restaurant chains throughout the UK, Republic and Europe with organic, free-range and so-called higher welfare chicken. It deals with 700 farms and has 35 million chicken on the ground at any given time. It also produces beef and pork products, vegetarian products and desserts.
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“We’re proud to be Northern Ireland’s first £2 billion-plus company,” said Ivan Sigueira, president of Pilgrim’s Europe, a unit of US good giant Pilgrim’s Pride, which owns Moy Park.
“We thank all our customers, team members, farmers and partners for their support in reaching this milestone and as we continue to identify ways to increase our speed to market, further simplify our operations and deliver best-in-class customer service and sustainable growth.”
Moy Park, which traces its roots back to the setting up of a small farming company in Co Tyrone, has had a number of owners over the past three decades.
It was acquired by US food giant OSI Group, best known as a meat supplier of McDonald’s, in 1996 before being sold on to Brazilian meatpacker Marfrig 12 years later.
The then heavily indebted Marfrig sold the business to Brazil’s largest food processing company, JBS, in 2015. JBS would sell the business in a $1.5 billion (€1.38 billion) deal in 2017. The buyer was US-based chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride, which is more than 80 per cent owned by JBS.
Pilgrim’s Europe, established earlier this year to bring together Pilgrim’s UK pork production business, Moy Park and Pilgrim’s Food Masters ready meals operation, reported last month that its revenues rose by 5.5 per cent to £4.2 billion and its earnings quadrupled to £106 million as the group recovered to pre-Covid business levels.
It said the results were supported by easing inflation in the UK and Europe and wage growth, while shoppers “increasingly traded into chicken, pork sausage and lamb” relative to other meat products.
Pilgrim’s Europe employs more than 5,000 people on the island of Ireland, according to a spokeswoman for the company.
“Being part of the Pilgrim’s Pride Group offers great opportunities to the company to both continue and accelerate its journey in delivering further growth and operational efficiency,” Moy Park said in its 2023 financial report. “With an experienced management team, a strong product portfolio, a well invested asset base and a robust financial position, we remain confident in the continued success and development of the business.”
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