Brazil-based meat and poultry company JBS will start exporting chicken products to India, with the first shipment expected to be sent within a few weeks.
JBS, in a statement issued to Reuters, said its Seara subsidiary became the first company in Brazil to be authorized to export chicken products to India.
The first shipment will consist of chicken thighs and leg quarters, but JBS did not reveal how much of those products will be sent to India, which is expected to arrive at the port of Jawaharlal Nehru.
JBS is said to be taking full advantage of new opportunities to export chicken to Asian nations, amid the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in China and other markets. Economists at the International Poultry Council recently projected that due to the ASF outbreak, poultry is poised to become the world’s most consumed meat, and that pork may never recover its leading position.
Upon announcing its 2018 financial results in March, JBS Global Chief Financial Officer Guilherme Cavalcanti stated that a strong international demand, particularly from Asia, positively contributed to Seara’s product price in international markets. The Seara segment achieved net revenues of BRL17.7 billion (US$4.57 billion) for the fiscal year.
JBS, according to the WATTAgNet Top Poultry Companies Database, is the world’s largest broiler company, slaughtering an estimated 3.5 billion head of chickens annually. Tyson Foods, headquartered in the United States, is the world’s second largest poultry company, slaughtering about 2.03 billion chickens annually. Fellow Brazil based company BRF ranks third among global poultry producers.
JBS is also a major producer and beef and pork products, and its footprint in the global pork industry is set to grow, as the company announced it has reached an agreement with Adelle Indústria de Alimentos Ltda. To acquire a pork processing plant in Seberi, Brazil.
