Silver Fern Farms Limited is a New Zealand multinational meat company. It is owned in equal partnership by Silver Fern Farms Co-op Ltd, a cooperative of 16,000 New Zealand sheep, cattle and deer farmers, and Shanghai Maling Aquarius Ltd. The company is New Zealand's largest livestock processing and marketing company. It has investments in manufacturing, meat processing, transport of livestock, export logistics and meat marketing, with associated companies including New Zealand and Australian Lamb Company Limited, The Lamb Co-Operative, Inc, Robotic Technologies Limited, Livestock Logistics Nationwide Limited, Kotahi Logistics LP, Ovine Automation Limited, FarmIQ Systems Ltd, Primary Collaboration NZ Ltd and the Red Meat Profit Partnership.
History
Silver Fern Farms Limited was established in 1948 as the Primary Producers Cooperative Society based initially in the South Island of New Zealand as a meat marketing cooperative, predominantly of sheep. It became known as PPCS Limited but remained a minor player in the meat industry until the early 1970s when a new management team was appointed. The removal of subsidies to farmers, the New Zealand Meat Board ceding its monopoly on sheepmeat marketing, and meat processing industry over-capacity gave the cooperative opportunities to utilise its profitability built up over the previous decade.
In the 1980s, PPCS expanded from only minor processing operations by taking over meat processing cooperatives and companies in initially the South Island and later the North Island. In 1986, released asset value was returned to the farmer shareholders by the creation of a holding company, Apex Limited. Apex was a vehicle that allowed the acquisition of Canterbury Frozen Meat.[2]