The large French agriculture cooperative Groupe Avril and the German pork and beef producer Tonnies are joining forces to build a cooked meat factory in France.
The companies together initially invest some €6 million in the project. The factory should be running in summer 2016 and will create 60 new jobs.
Groupe Avril, formerly known as Sofiproteol, will supply the pigs through its subsidiary Abera from 700 farmers in Brittany. The pigs will be born, bred, slaughtered and processed in France in order to offer 100% French product to the large supermarket chains in the country. Tonnies will, as one of the largest pig processors in Europe, provide the necessary knowhow and marketing knowledge. The companies don’t rule out that some of the basic material has to come from Germany when not enough is available in France itself.
With the project, Groupe Avril aims to bring the amount of pork and pork products imported into France down. Last year, the import amounted to over 1.6 billion compared to 1 billion in 2000. Those imports are mainly products with a higher added value which are the main target of our new project, Groupe Avril says.