Kenneth Sullivan, president and CEO of Smithfield Foods, has announced plans to retire early next year.
Sullivan, who has been with Smithfield for four decades and CEO for five years, will be handing the job over to Dennis Organ, chief operating officer for U.S. operations.
Perhaps Sullivan’s biggest achievement during his tenure as CEO was the implementation of “One Smithfield,” a program to standardize operations, supply chains, sales staffs and other aspects among Smithfield’s multiple, disparate brands. “One Smithfield” brought cooperation among Smithfield units, like Farmland and John Morrell, that had previously been almost competing against one another for retail business.
Smithfield had record profits for the first four years of Sullivan’s tenure. In his fifth, the pandemic hit the company hard, with five plants temporarily closing. More than 1,200 workers at a Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., contracted COVID-19 and four died. The company suffered a loss of $72 million in the second fiscal quarter of this year, which it attributed partly to spending $350 million on worker protection and other pandemic-related expenses.
“It has been a great honor and privilege to lead Smithfield for the past five years,” Sullivan said in a statement. “As a leading global food and agriculture company, we have an incredibly important role to play in society. It is an obligation we have proudly embraced over our more than 80-year history.”
