Hungarian poultry meat producer, Master Good Kft., has received a government grant to support the next stage of its capacity expansion.
Expected to increase revenue by 50 percent within two years of completion, the firm’s processing plant in Kisvarda will become one of the sixth largest in Europe.
The cost of the expansion is HUF15 billion (US$53.5 million at current exchange rates), reports the Budapest Business Journal.
To support the company, the Hungarian government has offered a grant of HUF3.4 billion, said Peter Szijjarto, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He added that the food industry has recorded 8 percent growth in the first half of this year, and employs 140,000 people.
Master Good achieved revenue of HUF69 billion in 2017, and exported around 75 percent of its production to 40 countries, he said.
According to the firm’s own web site, Master Good was founded in north eastern Hungary more than 100 years ago as a poultry breeder by the Barany family. The company added feed production, hatchery and processing facilities during the 1990s to become fully vertically integrated.
Seeing the potential to develop the market for free-range poultry in Western Europe, co-founder and owner, Laszlo Barany, set up the firm’s Farm Chicken Program in 2001, alongside standard commercial broiler production.
In 2004, poultry processing was included in Master Good’s activities through the acquisition of Hajdu-Bet Rt., and its plant in Kisvarda.
More than 90 percent of the birds processed at this and a further processing plant in Petnehaza have been reared on the company’s own farms.
Master Good’s products include whole chickens as well as bone-in and boneless parts, and ready meals.
According to the European poultry producers’ association, AVEC, Hungary was the 8th largest poultry meat producer in the European Union in 2016 with a total output of 616,000 metric tons (mt; carcass weight). The country’s imports that year amounted to 34,000 mt, and exports (live weight) were 211,000 mt.
