Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited, a company of the Charoen Pokphand Group, is an agro-industrial and food conglomerate headquartered in Thailand. It is one of the world's largest producers of feed[1][2] and shrimp,[3] and is also a global top three producer of poultry[4] and pork.
Approximately 64 percent of its revenue came from overseas operations, with 30 percent from its home market of Thailand, and six percent from export operations. It recently acquired Bellisio Foods, one of the largest frozen food suppliers in the United States, for US$1 billion, as well as Westbridge Foods, a major British poultry producer with turnover of over £340 Million [5]
The company's core businesses are livestock and aquaculture. Livestock operations include chicken broilers, chicken layers, ducks, and swine. In aquaculture, the two main marine animals are shrimp and fish.
Financials
Calendar year 2017 results: revenues of 501,507 million baht, net income of 15,259 million baht, and total assets of 593,497 million baht.[6] It employed 126,341 persons in 2017.[7]
Operations
Livestock
CPF's livestock business includes broilers, layers, swine, and ducks. Products can be divided into three main categories, animal feed, farm, and meat and food products.
Animal feed
The company produces livestock feed in the forms of concentrate, powder and pellets for chickens, cows, swine, and ducks.[8] The feed is distributed by more than 600 sales representatives throughout Thailand. A portion of the livestock feed is sold directly to large animal farms.
Animal breeding
The company researches and develops natural animal breeds. The goal is to obtain breeds that are disease-free and suited to the breeding environment in Thailand. The company produces parent stock broiler chicks, parent stock layer chicks, parent stock swine, broiler chicks, layer chicks, layers, and piglets for distribution to animal farms and domestic sales representatives.
Controversies
Slavery allegations
In June 2014, after a several-month-long investigation, the British newspaper The Guardian claimed that Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) purchases fishmeal, which it then feeds to its farmed prawns, from suppliers that own, operate, or buy from fishing boats manned with slaves. The Guardian claimed that after the slaves are bought "for as little as £250", the working conditions on those boats included forced labor with 20-hour work days, forced drug use, starvation, and executions.[11]
In July 2014, CP Foods hosted a three-day meeting to create a task force on the issue, with representatives from retailers, local government authorities, and non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam and the Environmental Justice Foundation.[12] The progress made at this meeting is difficult to ascertain, as the original newspaper, The Guardian, has not posted any additional stories and the company website's sustainability page[13] says "For the latest general update covering our approach and achievements" to read a page from December 2013, which promises "a further progress update in Q1 2014."
See also
- Chearavanont family
External links
References
- World's Top 10 Animal Feed Companies Market Research Reports® Inc., 2019-08-27, retrieved 2020-11-09^
- The world's leading feed producers www.wattagnet.com, retrieved 2021-01-28^
- CP Foods building land-based shrimp farm in Florida