{"id":89341,"date":"2014-11-22T14:25:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-22T04:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=89341"},"modified":"2020-08-21T18:50:35","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T08:50:35","slug":"1-45b-deal-shakes-up-pork-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2014\/11\/22\/1-45b-deal-shakes-up-pork-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"$1.45b Deal Shakes Up Pork Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Coward from Pork Queensland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

November 22, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Australian pork industry faces a major shake-up following the announcement on Friday that JBS Australia has signed a $1.45 billion agreement to buy the Primo Group.<\/p>\n

Primo’s brands include Primo Smallgoods and Hans. It operates five processing plants in Australia and New Zealand, including one in Brisbane,\u00a0and employs 3000 people.<\/p>\n

JBS Australia<\/a><\/strong> is the largest fresh meats processor in Australia, specialising in lamb and beef.<\/p>\n

It is a division of Brazilian company JBS, the largest meat processing company in the world.<\/p>\n

Pork Queensland president John Coward – a former managing director of Kingaroy-based Swickers – told ABC Rural the agreement would bring “international expertise” to the market.<\/p>\n

“You can look at that in different ways,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It might be a bit of strong domination but it also brings (international) expertise to the field and gives them diversification across Australia.”<\/p>\n

Mr Coward said Australia was well-positioned to expand pork sales into the Asian market.<\/p>\n

However, he said there would still be competition from other Australian processors for pigs.<\/p>\n

“(Pork) producers still have a significant amount of opportunity to market their pigs to other outlets so I don’t think there will be anybody saying this is too strong. There are six other major processors in Australia.”<\/p>\n

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