Top world broiler, egg rankings for 2020

The latest edition of Poultry International’s World’s Top Poultry Companies reveals how a handful of companies supply significant shares of the global market, standing head and shoulders above their competitors.

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(pressmaster | BigStockPhoto.com)
(pressmaster | BigStockPhoto.com)

Our World’s Top Poultry Companies edition is here again, bringing you rankings of the world’s largest broiler meat and egg producers.

We’ve taken a slightly different approach to how we present the rankings this year, highlighting subsidiaries under their parent businesses in some entries in our Top 50 broiler producers ranking and in several other tables.  

Highlighting subsidiaries and their output in this way allows easy identification of which business unit contributes what to total production each year and illustrates how much global reach some companies have.

This is not the only change you will find. We’ve also introduced some new rankings and tables, but the basic format of our data presentation remains the same.

As in previous years, there is much more information available through our online database. Besides each company entry listed here there is a link to the company’s database profile. Within these profiles, you will find more extensive data spanning many years, milestones and background information.

Broiler producers

Brazil’s JBS again leads the ranking of the world’s largest broiler producers. Slaughtering over 4 billion head annually, its chicken business is now more than twice the size of the second-largest chicken producer in the world, Tyson Foods.

In fact, the combined head slaughtered of companies ranked from 5 to 10 does not match the number of birds slaughtered by JBS annually.

JBS took the top spot from Tyson in 2017 and the gap between the two continues to grow. Tyson Foods may, be secure in second place for some time as the gap between it and third place BRF has also grown this year.

The top five chicken producers worldwide measured by head slaughtered hold the same positions this year as they did last. JBS should retain its top position for years to come, but the impact of COVID-19, trade disputes and animal diseases this year may well change the rankings next year.

The rankings reveal that the largest 10 broiler producing companies slaughtered 12.9 billion head over the last reporting period – enough to supply every person in the world with more than one and a half chickens.

In 2019 and 2020, there were 16 U.S.-based companies included in the top 50, eight in the top 25 and five ranked between 26 and 50.

The rankings are a little different, however, for China. Last year saw nine Chinese companies included. Four have been ranked in the top 25 in both years, but the lower half of the rankings has seen a change. In our 2019 ranking, five were included in the lower. This year, the number has dropped, lowering China’s overall participation in the top 50.

Of the three big Brazilian producers, JBS and BRF have held on to positions one and three, respectively, this year. Aurora Alimentos, however, has dropped from 34 to 39 due to its output declining by more than 20 million birds.

Other changes this year include the entry of Scandi Standard from Sweden. Slaughtering 200 million birds per annum, it enters the list at position 44.

Egg production

China is the word’s largest egg producer, but no Chinese company makes it into the list of the leading 25 egg companies.

In this latest ranking, Cal-Maine of the U.S. takes the top spot. The company saw its flock expand by over 10% last year overtaking Mexico’s Proteina Animal, which reported no increase in its laying flock.

The ranking of the world’s 25 largest egg producers is dominated by companies based in the U.S. Of the almost 400 million laying hens managed by the world’s leading 25 producers, over 184 million birds are owned by the 10 leading U.S. companies, whose flock sizes, for the main part, either stayed the same or increased over the reporting period.

The Americas as a whole strongly dominate the top 25 ranking, being home to 17 of the top 25 egg companies when measured by flock size. These companies own 283 million birds – more than the entire population of Indonesia. 

 

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