Dive Brief:
- JBS Australia will buy rival Primo Group for A$1.45 billion ($1.3 billion), consolidating power in the meat processing trade across the Asia-Pacific.
- JBS Australia is the largest meat processor in Australia (and parent company JBS is the largest meat processor in the world). Primo Group is the largest producer of pork products in Australia.
- The deal gives JBS control of five additional processing plants in Australia, and adds some 3,000 workers to the rolls.
Dive Insight:
If there's a single market that has done more to change the global food trade in recent years than China's insatiable taste for pork, we have no idea what it might be. And if there's a single trade lane that is about to change more than Australia-China, we have no idea what that might be either. Because just this week, the leaders of those two nations agreed to end the 20% tariffs on Australian pork exports to China by 2017. That's likely to make the JBS purchase of Primo look like a very wise move in about two years.