Chicken producer Moy Park has paid dividends of £124.5 million (€143 million) this year to its US owners, according to accounts just filed for 2024. That comes on top of payments of £98.3 million that was paid during the trading year to Pilgrim’s Pride Corporation.
Sales at the Craigavon-based group, one of Europe’s largest poultry producers, fell 4.6 per cent to £1.94 billion, from the £2.03 billion record hit in 2023, although the company said that, on a like-for-like basis, turnover in the business was up.
Profits before tax rose 41 per cent to £102.7 million. After tax, profits of £83 million were almost 50 per cent up on 2023, a year in which the company had seen net profit almost treble to £55.8 million.
The company paid close to £20 million in tax. It also paid £9.6 million in restructuring costs, a sevenfold jump on the previous year.
READ MORE
In its financial review, the directors said the company had made significant progress in a “challenging” market in 2024 “by focusing on driving operational improvements and securing contracts with key customers”. Alongside a fall in the price of key commodities towards the end of last year, this helped the business offset higher labour costs, they said.
One of Northern Ireland’s largest companies, Moy Park supplies retailers and restaurants across Europe with brand and own label products. It works with 700 farms and has 35 million chicken on the ground at any given time.
The company also produces beef and vegetarian products and desserts.
Employment last year rebounded by over 370 people to 9,014 across the company’s nine processing facilities in Ireland, Britain and France, after falling by 660 people in 2023.
Amid concerns over an outbreak of avian flu in Britain, the company said it was maintaining “robust biosecurity measures” across its operations. “Farming facilities are also spread between a large numbers of areas in England and Northern Ireland to avoid reliance on a single production area,” the company said.
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.
