JBS Food Canada sells cattle feed yard

Brooks, Alta. – JBS Food Canada Inc. has announced it’s selling Lakeside Feeders – its beef cattle feed yard and the adjacent farmland – to MCF Holdings Ltd., a subsidiary of Nilsson Bros. Inc., for CDN$50 million.

In a statement, JBS says the “transaction is subject to regulatory review and approval.”

As part of the agreement, says the statement, MCF will “continue to supply cattle to JBS’ beef processing facility in Brooks.”

MCF says it will offer JBS’ current feed yard and farm employees jobs once the transaction closes.

MCF Holdings is a livestock-based agricultural business. Its parent company, Nilsson Bros., owns agricultural businesses operating across all the Western provinces, including auction markets, livestock insurance and finance, and feed yards. It also has ranches and livestock production facilities in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

A story on WattAgNet.com (“JBS Food Canada to sell Alberta beef cattle feed yard,” July 18, 2017) reports that JBS has been selling assets “to reinforce its competitive advantage in the global food industry…The sale of feed yard assets will more closely align the JBS business model with key US competitors and allow the company to concentrate its efforst on its core food and value-added products businesses.”

The article reports that in June JBS sold Five Rivers Cattle Feeding, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazil-based meat and poultry company. Five Rivers Cattle Feeding’s website says the company has a combined feeding capacity of more than 980,000 head of cattle in locations in the US. In Canada Five Rivers manages a 75,000 head capacity feed yard in Brooks.