Aurora Alimentos will temporarily cease production at a poultry plant in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, the company announced.
The facility of interest accounts for about 12 percent of Aurora’s total slaughter capacity.
According to a Reuters report, the plant employs nearly 1,300 people, and those employees will be placed on paid leave, effective July 2. The furlough is expected to last 30 days.
The reason the plant is being idled is to adjust the company’s capacity to match the demand for its poultry products.
This marks the second time Aurora Alimentos has suspended operations at one of its plants. Last month, the company had announced it would take another facility in Santa Catarina offline for a 30-day period. That plant employed close to 1,400 people.
The company has cited export bans and increased feed costs as reasons for the decreased demand and ultimate suspension of the poultry plants.
According to the WATTAgNet Top Poultry Companies Database, Aurora slaughtered 202.4 million birds in 2017. It is the third largest broiler producer in Brazil, and the sixth largest in Latin America.
The European Union (EU) recently made a unanimous decision to ban chicken imports from 20 poultry plants in Brazil, having a harsh impact on the overall poultry industry in the Latin American country. The EU decision, which followed the Operation Weak Flesh investigations, is said to affect between 30 and 35 percent of the country’s chicken exports.
BRF has also suspended some poultry processing operations
Aurora is not the only company within the troubled Brazilian poultry industry to suspend production at poultry plants to mitigate the reduction in exports.
BRF, which had 12 poultry plants affected by the EU ban, within recent months has put workers on paid leave at poultry processing facilities in Rio Verde, Carambei, Capinzal and Mineiros.
