Chicken processor Foster Farms has been bought by a private equity firm and will install Donnie Smith, former CEO of Tyson Foods, as its new chief.
Foster Farms has been acquired by Atlas Holdings, a private equity firm that owns companies in a variety of industries, including automotive, paper and pulp, power generation and metals. Its only other food company is Flagstone Foods, a private label snack-food processor acquired from TreeHouse Foods in 2019.
Privately held Foster Farms is estimated to be the tenth-largest U.S. poultry processor. It’s 54th on the Food Processing Top 100 list, with estimated sales of $2.5 billion in 2020.
Smith was CEO of Tyson Foods from 2009 until he retired in 2016.
“I’ve long been an admirer of the Foster Family and the business they’ve built over the past eight decades,” Smith said in a statement quoted in the Wall Street Journal. “In this new era, we will maintain and further that legacy, rooted in animal welfare, superior product quality, customer service and community engagement.”
