Cantillon: It’s Moy Park time at last

The marketing department of Moy Park, the biggest poultry company on the island, was particularly active on Twitter this week. "30 days to go," it chirped in a seasonal reference on Tuesday. Its turkeys may be less enthused by the campaign's hashtag, #MoyParkTime.

Whatever about Christmas, it really will be Moy Park time in 2015. The company’s Brazilian owner Marfrig confirmed recently that the Northern Ireland-based company, which buys in enormous quantities from Irish poultry growers, will float on the stock market next year. What has been the hold up?

Moy Park may be low-profile, but it is a private sector giant, employing more than 5,000 people in the North and more than 10,000 when its operations across Europe are included. Marfrig estimates that the Irish company’s sales could get close to £1.5 billion (€1.9 billion) this year, up from £800 million when it bought it in 2008. This is big business, not chicken feed.

Marfrig has debts of more than 7 billion Brazilian reals (€2.2 billion), and the flotation of Moy Park is designed to help it defray some of that clunking weight. The Brazilian company has suggested that it will keep a majority stake in Moy Park, possibly off-loading only a third.

Even still, analysts have suggested that the Irish company could be worth up to £1 billion, so a timely flotation of Moy Park with some of Marfrig’s other international operations, such as the US Keystone, will do much of the heavy lifting.

A deal was first mooted in March of this year, however. Analysts have been scratching their heads as to why Marfrig has delayed pulling the trigger.

Moy Park is a growth story, with sales creeping upwards by 10 per cent a year. The longer the Brazilians wait, the more earnings grow, and the better the price it will presumably receive on the markets.

For Moy Park’s staff in Craigavon, however, the wait creates unwelcome uncertainty.