Brazilian meat giant MBRF will boost volumes to Saudi Arabia under an agreement that now includes beef.
The terms of an agreement dating to May 2024 with Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company (Salic) have been amended, with the maximum poultry volumes doubling to 600,000 metric tonnes a year.
MBRF was formed last year through the merger of Brazilian meat groups Marfrig Global Foods and BRF.
Together, Marfrig and BRF have also secured shipments of beef, with an annual provision of up to 270,000 tonnes, the Brazilian meat heavyweights said in a statement.
They said the new agreement with Salic, which is owned by the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund – the Public Investment Fund (PIF) – “reinforces the strategic partnership between the companies and Saudi Arabia, particularly with regard to strengthening food security”.
Marfrig entered talks with BRF in May last year to combine the two businesses. Marfrig was already the largest shareholder in its Brazilian peer before the merger was approved by the country’s competition regulator last September to create MBRF Global Foods.
Local publication Valor International carried a comment from MBRF chairman Marcos Molina highlighting the additional resources from the merger.
“The creation of MBRF created a multi-protein platform that allowed us to include beef in the agreement with Salic,” he said.
“Doubling the committed volumes provided for in the contract reflects confidence in our capacity for scalability and the quality of our product, reinforcing the strategic role we play in the food security of the entire region.”
Through its combination with BRF, Marfrig also secured access to another meat joint venture set up by its peer in Saudi Arabia with Halal Products Development Company (HPDC), which is also owned by PIF.
Under an agreement announced in October, BRF said it would move its distribution businesses in Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE into the joint-venture company, BRF Arabia Holding.
Meanwhile, Salic has previously partnered with another Brazilian protein company, Minerva Foods.
They formed a joint venture in 2021 and brokered the first deal in Australia later that year with Shark Lake Food Group Abattoir and Great Eastern Abattoir. The Australian Lamb Company followed in 2022.
Marfrig also entered a deal with Minerva in 2023 for its cattle slaughtering and deboning plant assets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.
It included eleven facilities and a distribution centre in Brazil, three plants in Uruguay and a unit in Argentina, as well as lamb plant in Chile.
The Uruguay portion of the deal was, however, blocked by the country’s competition regulator. Marfrig consequently called off that part of the Minerva agreement last year.
