Marfrig
Marfrig S.A. is the second largest Brazilian food processing company, after JBS. The company is headquartered in São Paulo. The company has 33 production units around the world and operational bases in 22 countries, exporting their products to over 100. Its activities include the production, processing, industrialization, sale and distribution of food based on animal protein, in addition to the sale of other food byproducts, such as frozen vegetables, sauces and desserts. The company is one of the largest beef producers in the world.
Group activities
Marfrig has about 40,000 employees and has the following structure of units: 33 units of cattle industry, 21 industrial units of chickens, 48 plants for industrial goods and processed, four industrial pig units in Brazil, two industrial units of turkeys, five plants of lamb, 27 own factories of feed for chickens, turkeys, and pigs and two trading companies, 14 industries and commercial offices for leather. The daily capacity is 31,200 head of cattle, 10,400 pigs, 10,400 sheep, 350,000 turkeys, and 3.7 million chickens.In addition, the company has an installed capacity around 126,000 tons of processed products, and more than 178,500 pieces of leather processed per month. In June 2010, it announced the acquisition of Keystone Foods, a supplier of processed meats for the restaurant chain McDonald's and other companies. In 2018, Marfrig sold Keystone to Tyson Foods.
Attention from institutional investors due to Amazon rainforest destruction
Marfrig Global Foods's beef exports has repeatedly implicated in illegal deforestation, as well as indigenous land rights violations and slave labour according to the environmental watchdog Forests and Finance. It has previously been identified as having a problematic beef supply chain fuelling the deforestation of the Amazon forest. The deforestation free supply chain watchdog Forest 500 further identified Marfrig's commitments as being insufficient, with a commitment strength of 9/20 In February 2022, IDB Invest, the private-sector arm of the Inter-American Development Bank shelved a US$200 million loan to Marfrig Global Foods over the group's deforestation impact.On 21. December 2021 the Government Pension Fund of Norway placed Marfrig under observation "due to risk that the company contributes to serious environmental damage".