The editors of Poultry International, WATTPoultry USA, Egg Industry and Industria Avicola have expanded our World's Top Poultry Companies database to include company data on the 800 leading poultry producers worldwide. We define poultry producers as companies producing chicken, turkey, geese, ducks, table eggs, egg products, hatching eggs and day-old chicks. The full database can be found at www.WATTAgNet.com/worldtoppoultry.html.
There is no easy way to compile a list of the top poultry producers around the world. We started this project four years ago and have been steadily adding companies to our database. We’ve doubled its size in the last year and continue to add more companies and refine the data on companies within the database. If your company is missing, or you wish to add or correct to the data we are showing, simply contact us at [email protected].
We start the survey by collecting data from every available resource, combing our circulation lists and sending direct inquiries to readers of the magazine. We also use other research tools – advice from suppliers to the industry, association and governmental statistics, annual reports and business reports, websites, and other sources – to piece together a profile of each company in the database.
Our methodology
Because we cover the world’s industry, there is no standard measurement for size or success across all countries. For major producing countries such as the United States or Brazil, we pick the top few companies – determined by number of head slaughtered per week – to include in the magazine but have much deeper data on those countries’ producers in the online database.
It is difficult to make size comparisons across different countries and markets. A large producer in Poland would be a small one in Brazil. So we go through the database country by country and pick the leading producers – whether it’s chicken, turkey, ducks, eggs or egg products – from each country and present them in this issue.
We classify companies as producers of chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, table eggs, hatching eggs and egg products. We collect relevant data depending on the company’s production. Integrated poultry producers are listed with head slaughtered annually or weekly in high-volume countries. For egg producers, we list number of laying hens. We list numbers of employees, revenue, and facilities when available.
Every year we refine the data we’re collecting. In much of the world, the poultry industry is the production of day-old chicks or pullets to be sold to farmers and then sold on the live market. We list many of these breeders, and as we gain further data, we’ll add lists of the top breeders in the world to our information.
This issue of Poultry International contains 300 companies – an increase from 200 companies listed in 2011. In order to get details on 300 companies in the issue, we changed to a table format for the listings, rather than the text listings we ran in 2011.
Each listing in this issue contains the name of the company, its headquarters location and a brief summary of the company. There is a link within each company’s listing that will take you directly to the company’s listing on WATTAgNet.com. There is more complete summary and additional data, such as production and sales volumes, specific types of production, and other facts listed in the interactive online database.
You will be asked register at WATTAgNet.com to view this data. Registration is free and only takes a minute.
In addition to further data on the 300 companies listed in this issue, the database contains data on more than 500 additional companies that did not make the cut into the magazine. Once you have registered on WATTAgNet.com, you can search the entire database and create your own lists of top companies in various regions and countries.
We’ve created several lists from the database, such as the Top 40 poultry producers, that appear in this issue. These lists and special downloadable files will also be available in the expanded Market Data section of WATTAgNet.com.
This database is compiled by the entire WATT group of poultry publications – Poultry International, WATT PoultryUSA, Industria Avícola, and Egg Industry.
