Craigavon-based Moy Park is Northern Ireland’s largest private sector company, and synonymous with the poultry industry given that around 600 local farmers supply the company with chicken and chicken based products.

However, with 13 production sites across Ireland, Britain, France and the Netherlands producing a diverse range of products, there is much more to the company than just poultry.

Speaking at an Ulster Bank lunch at last week’s Balmoral Show, chief executive Janet McCollum emphasised that Moy Park is now a European food company. While poultry meat is still at the core of the business, Moy Park also supplies around 25% of the western European chicken parent market with eggs. It also has a business in France supplying beef to McDonald’s restaurants in France and Belgium, a site in the Netherlands producing the likes of savoury snacks and spring rolls, and under Kitchen Range Foods operates two sites in England supplying mostly meat-free products.

That diverse range of businesses came under the umbrella of Moy Park in 2013, after the then parent company Marfrig decided to bring together its European operations under a single management structure. In 2015, Marfrig sold its European business to Brazilian company, JBS, the second largest food company in the world.

“That international ownership has given Moy Park a global perspective,” claimed McCollum. At present, it has over 800 farmer suppliers across these islands, with 37m chickens on-farm at any one time, and the ability to process 5.5m chickens per week.

Innovation has been crucial to growth within the business, and Moy Park were the first company to introduce free-range chicken in the 1980s and organic chicken in the 1990’s, said McCollum. She also highlighted that Moy Park remains an innovative business, citing examples such as recent work to reduce campylobacter in chicken and also a partnership with Devenish Nutrition to produce omega-3 enriched chicken for sale in Waitrose stores.

Looking to the future, McCollum acknowledged that there are challenges ahead with the likes of Brexit, but highlighted that Moy Park has weathered a number of storms in the past, including in 2007 when it was loss-making. “I am confident that we have a robust business that will continue to thrive and grow,” she concluded.