JBS-Friboi, the biggest beef producer in Latin America, said on Tuesday that it agreed to buy US meat packer Swift & Co for about $225 million, creating the world's largest meat company. The take-over was the biggest in a series of acquisitions for JBS-Friboi.
The company started exporting fresh meat in 1997 and began its international expansion in August 2005, when it bought Argentine meat processor Swift Armour for $200 million. JBS-Friboi now has five plants in Argentina.
JBS-Friboi, which went public on Brazil's Sao Paulo Stock Exchange two months ago, will pay $225 million in cash and assume $1.2 billion of Swift's debt, the companies said in a statement, valuing the deal at $1.4 billion. JBS-Friboi becomes the latest in a string of Brazilian companies, such as iron ore miner CVRD and steelmaker Gerdau, to make large overseas acquisitions. The company was founded by Sobrinho brothers Jose Batista and Juvensor as a business buying cattle from farmers to resell to meatpackers.
The brothers opened their own butcher shop in 1953 in the central state of Goias and later expanded through take-overs of several slaughterhouses in central Brazil.
JBS-Friboi slaughters about 22,600 head of cattle a day in its 21 plants across eight states in Brazil and five plants in three provinces of Argentina.
Greeley, Colorado-based Swift, controlled by investment group HM Capital Partners LLC, is the No 3 US beef and pork processor with annual sales of $9 billion. Swift's Australia unit is the biggest meat producer in that country.
Swift said in January it hired J.P. Morgan to assist in reviewing the company's "strategic and financial alternatives." That review was prompted in part by unsolicited inquiries from a variety of third parties, Swift said. Rothschild advised JBS-Friboi on the transaction. JBS-Friboi's shares rose 5 percent to 7.7 reais on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange. The shares are down 3.75 percent from its IPO price of 8 reais.
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