Description
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a pork producer and food-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia. It operates as an independent subsidiary of the Chinese-owned conglomerate WH Group. Founded in 1936 as the Smithfield Packing Company by Joseph W. Luter and his son, the company is the largest pig and pork producer in the world
In addition to owning over 500 farms in the US, Smithfield contracts with another 2,000 independent farms around the country to raise Smithfield's pigs. Outside the US, the company has facilities in Mexico, Poland, Romania, Germany, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. Globally the company employed 50,200 in 2016 and reported an annual revenue of $14 billion. Its 973,000-square-foot meat-processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was said in 2000 to be the world's largest, slaughtering 32,000 pigs a day.
Then known as Shuanghui Group, WH Group purchased Smithfield Foods in 2013 for $4.72 billion. It was the largest Chinese acquisition of an American company to date. The acquisition of Smithfield's 146,000 acres of land made WH Group, headquartered in Luohe, Henan province, one of the largest overseas owners of American farmland.
