Source: John Strak, MEATINGPLACE, 9/6/11

The Dutch poultry and food processing group Plukon Royale has announced its intention to merge with the Friki Stolle group in Germany. The Stolle family have signaled their agreement in principle to the planned merger and the merger will be submitted for approval to the appropriate authorities. The family intends to be financially and personally active in the merged group.

The two groups specialize in the production and marketing of fresh, prepackaged poultry products for food retailers and fresh and frozen poultry meat for the manufacturing industry and wholesale sector in northwest Europe. Plukon Royale has 10 facilities altogether in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The sales for Plukon Royale in 2010 were $1 billion and for the Stolle group were $500 million.

The Plukon Royale Group is made up of four companies: Plukon Poultry Group, Pingo Poultry Group, Vleesch du Bois Group and Flandrex. Altogether it has slaughter capacity of 4.5 million per week. Stolle is a family firm with more than 50 years' experience in Germany in poultry, meat and food processing operations. It has four locations in Germany and processes about 100 million chickens and 2.5 million turkeys each year.

The total number of employees in these groups will be around 4,200 with around 2,700 employees in Plukon Royale’s plants and 1,500 employees in the Stolle Group’s sites. In the 13 merged plants in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium there will be around 6.5 million chickens and turkeys slaughtered and processed each week.

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