Northern Ireland's Moy Park acquired for $1.3bn

Northern Irish poultry processor Moy Park, the region's biggest company, has been acquired in a $1.3bn (£1bn) deal by Pilgrim's Pride Corporation.

The new buyer has confirmed that the company's headquarters will remain in Craigavon, county Armagh. Moy Park is Northern Ireland's only £1 billion company.

Pilgrim's Pride Corporation is buying the business from Brazil's JBS, having had the takeover unanimously approved by a special committee of its board of directors.

Since its founding in 1943, Moy Park has established a strong reputation throughout the country and has grown into one of the largest companies of its kind in Europe. It employs 6,000 people in Northern Ireland.

It processes more than 5.7 million birds per week and has 13 processing plants across the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands supplying major food retailers and restaurant chains.

Pilgrim confirmed that Moy Park will "remain headquartered in Craigavon" and added that the company's management team, led by chief executive Janet McCollum, will continue to lead the business.

Headquartered at Greely, Colorado since 2011, Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, also known as Pilgrim's, is a Brazilian-owned, American food company, currently the largest chicken producer in the United States and the second-largest chicken producer in Mexico.

Pilgrim's employs about 38,000 people with sales of $8.1 billion in 2012, and has operations in 12 states, Mexico and Puerto Rico. The company has the capacity to process about 36 million birds per week resulting in almost 9.5 billion pounds of live chicken annually.