Tyson Foods, the largest meat company in the US, has struck a $2.2bn (€1.9bn) deal to acquire Keystone Foods, a major supplier of beef, chicken, pork and fish to the global foodservice industry, from the Brazilian company Marfrig. Headquartered in Pennsylvania, Keystone generated sales of $2.5bn (€2.2bn) last year and profits of $211m (€182m).

Almost two-thirds (65%) of Keystone’s sales are in the US, with the remaining 35% of revenue coming from its business in Asia-Pacific. The deal includes six meat processing plants and one R&D site in the US, as well as a further eight processing plants and three R&D centres dotted across Asia and Australia.

Keystone is a major supplier to some of the world’s largest restaurant chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and KFC among others. Keystone supplies McDonald’s alone with around 70,000t of beef and 140,000t of chicken every year. The company even helped McDonald’s develop the chicken McNugget in the late 1970s.