companies lead the way with 12 companies in the world's top 25 egg company rankings.
Readers of Egg Industry are already familiar with WATT’s long-running annual Top Egg Company Survey, which ranks U.S. egg producers by the number of hens housed. More recently, we began the ambitious task of collecting data and ranking poultry companies throughout the world. Data gathered for 2013 by the editors of Poultry International and Industria Avicola on companies that produce table eggs outside the U.S. has now been combined with Egg Industry’s survey data to provide our readers a look at the relative size of egg companies around the globe.
The Top 25
The largest egg producer in the U.S., Cal-Maine Foods, is also the world’s largest with 32 million hens housed (Table 1). Another North American egg producer is the world’s second largest, the Mexican company Proteina Animal, with 30 million hens. Avangardco, an egg producer in Ukraine with 27 million hens, is the world’s third largest and one of only two European companies ranking in the Top 25. Two U.S. companies, Fremont Farms of Iowa and Hickman’s Egg Ranch, tied in the 25th position in the survey, so there are 26 firms ranked.
American egg producer Rose Acre Farms is fourth in the rankings with 24.6 million hens. The only Middle Eastern egg producer in the top 25, the Arab Company for Livestock Development, a Syrian firm, is the fifth largest in the world with 23.4 million hens.
The country with the most egg producers in the top 25 is the U.S. with 14, followed by Mexico with three, Brazil with two, and Ukraine, Thailand, Syria, Japan, France and Malaysia with one each.
