São Paulo – After having purchased multinational company Keystone Foods, the Brazilian food industry group Marfrig now owns units in the Middle East. Marfrig already owned plants in South America, North America, Asia, Africa and Europe, and now, aside from more operations in North America, Europe and Asia, it will also have arms in Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. The Arab countries in the Middle East that Keystone Foods owns operations in are Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and United Arab Emirates, according to information from the company’s website.
After the purchase, Marfrig now has 151 units in 22 countries. The deal was announced by Marfrig in June, but the Brazilian company only took over Keystone Foods, originally United States-based, early this month, after approval from anti-trust organizations in the United States and Europe. The deal was worth US$ 1.26 billion, after Marfrig issued 2.5 billion Brazilian reals (US$ 1.1 billion at current exchange rates) in debentures.
Keystone Foods operates in development, production, sales and distribution of food made from beef, pork, poultry and fish, geared mainly towards food services. The company’s client portfolio includes large international chains such as McDonald’s, Campbell’s, ConAgra, Yum Brands and Chipotle. In 2009, Keystone posted US$ 6.4 billion in revenues.
Marfrig is considered one of the most internationalized Brazilian groups, and made around 40 purchases over the last three years. Upon announcing the Keystone purchase, the company informed that it was the last purchase in its process, at least in the next five years. Even before the deal, the group was already the fourth leading producer of beef and bovine meat products in the world.
In the first half this year, Marfrig posted 7.2 billion reals (US$ 4.2 billion) in gross revenues, an increase of 43.5% over the same period of 2009, when the figure was 5 billion reals (US$ 2.9 billion). The foreign market accounted for 3.1 billion reals (US$ 1.8 billion) of revenues and the remainder consisted of domestic sales. The company posted gross profit of 1.2 billion reals (US$ 531 million) and the operational profit was minus 85.3 million reals (US$ 37.7 million).
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
