Meat giant JBS has announced plans to invest 216m reais ($37.8m) in four Seara sites in south-eastern Brazil.
The investment will focus on the “modernisation and expansion” of the facilities, creating 278 direct jobs, JBS said.
The company markets chicken, pork, processed foods and plant-based protein products under the Seara brand.
JBS said it would deploy the cash at four sites in Brazil’s Santa Catarina site: a pork processing unit in Itapiranga; a poultry farm in Bom Retiro; and poultry processing units in Itaiópolis and Nova Veneza.
The Itapiranga site will receive 98m reais to boost its pork processing capacity by 600 pigs per day.
In Bom Retiro, 89m reais will be used to build a new breeder farm to support poultry operations.
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By GlobalDataJBS will invest 15m reais in Itaiópolis to modernise its poultry plant there. Meanwhile, the Nova Veneza site will benefit from a 14m reais upgrade, to “increase processing speed, expanding capacity” by 38,000 more birds per day.
Seara CEO João Campos said: “It is a great pleasure to be here, to be able to be part of the development, job creation and extremely important work.
“The state of Santa Catarina is already a very important state for Seara’s operations and this project helps us to continue investing even more in the state.”
JBS’s latest investment follows a series of international investments in production.
Announcing fourth-quarter results in March, JBS CEO Gilberto Tomazoni said: “Our global diversification strategy remains intact, supported by continuous investment in innovation and brand development, allowing us to build a more resilient and higher-value portfolio.”
In March, $100m was allocated to build two meat factories in Vietnam, which will produce beef, pork and poultry products using raw materials mainly imported from Brazil.
In February, $200m was earmarked for US beef production in Texas and Colorado.
At the end of 2024, JBS announced a $2.5bn investment in Nigeria over five years for six meat-processing facilities, including three for poultry, two for beef, and one for pork.
