JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, has agreed to sell its Five Rivers cattle feedlot in the US as part of a $200m (€163m) deal. The Five Rivers business will be sold to Pinnacle Asset Management, a New York investment company. As part of the sale, Pinnacle has signed a “long-term contract” to supply cattle to JBS’s beef processing operations in the US.

The Five Rivers cattle feedlot business is the largest of its kind in the world. Operating 11 feedlots across Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, the business has capacity to hold close to 1m head of cattle at any one time. More than 2m head of cattle are finished from these feedlots every year.

The sale of Five Rivers brings to a conclusion the original asset divestment programme announced by JBS in June last year. JBS said it would sell a number of non-core assets, including Five Rivers and Northern Ireland poultry processor Moy Park, in a bid to pay down spiralling debt costs that exceeded €12bn at the time.

The original target from the sale of these non-core assets had been to raise $1.8bn (€1.6bn). However, JBS has exceeded this target with a total of $2.2bn (€1.8bn) raised from the sales of five separate businesses.

The Brazilian giant said the cash generated from these asset sales had helped reduce the company’s debt leverage ratio (net debt to earnings) from 4.2 times in 2017 to a less severe 3.4 times.