Moy Park to create 628 jobs

Northern Ireland-based poultry processor, Moy Park, has announced a £170m investment, 628 jobs, and a new innovation centre at its headquarters in Craigavon, and at its bases in Ballymena and Dungannon.

Moy Park has been owned by the Marfrig Group, of Brazil, since 2008, hence its high-profile as a World Cup 2014 sponsor.

Beginning as an agri-food firm in the Co Tyrone village of Moygashel in 1943, Moy Park has grown into a corporate multinational giant that employs 11,500. It is best-known in the UK and Ireland for selling fresh meats under its own name, and under brands such as the Jamie Oliver trademark.

A top-20 UK company, valued at £1bn, with annual, pre-tax profits of £33.8m, Moy Park processes 235m chickens and 2m turkeys annually.

It has been the number-one firm in the Belfast Telegraph’s top 100 companies for the last four years.

Moy Park’s poultry comes from 800 farms across Northern Ireland and Britain.

These include about 110 farms that produce organic and free-range chicken, and the company is the largest producer of organic and free-range poultry meat.