William Blair acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Wayne Farms, Continental Grain, and Cargill in connection with the sale of its poultry production facility located in Laurel, Mississippi. The transaction closed on October 15.
Transaction Highlights
- Sector expertise and deep relationships: Wayne Farms recognized William Blair’s extensive knowledge and expertise in the packaged food and meat sectors and first-call access to active strategic buyers.
- Process and execution excellence: William Blair constructed and managed an accelerated, high-touch process with a carefully targeted and curated group of strategic buyers, successfully utilizing speed to generate significant competitive tension.
- Trusted Guidance: The transaction team worked closely with Wayne Farms through every step of the process, providing tailored, strategic guidance, relevant buyer and market insights, and thoughtful process strategy and tactics, resulting in an exceptional outcome for shareholders.
About the Companies
Wayne Farm’s Laurel facility is a vertically-integrated live poultry production operation consisting of a processing facility, hatchery, and feed mill with the capability to process over 300 million live pounds per year.
Wayne Farms is the seventh-largest vertically integrated poultry producer in the U.S., with annual sales exceeding $2.0 billion. Wayne Farms owns and operates 11 fresh and further-processed facilities throughout the Southeast, producing more than 2.6 billion pounds of poultry products each year. It offers fresh poultry products under the Wayne Farms Fresh Chicken, Naked Truth, Platinum Harvest, and Ladybird brands and prepared / packaged products under Wayne Farms Chicken Products, Buffaloos, Naked Truth, Crispy Fliers, and Chef’s Craft brands.
Amick Farms produces and markets fresh and frozen chicken products for foodservice, industrial and retail customers. With 3,000 employees, over 300 family farm partners, and two integrated poultry production facilities, Amick produces over 1 billion pounds of quality chicken products annually. Amick Farms is owned by OSI Group, world’s 10th largest meat manufacturing company in the world.
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