company opens breading factory in Rolândia

Chicken breading and sausages with the highest quality on the Brazilian market. This is what JBS promises with the new Seara brand plant in the Rolândia industrial complex, in the north of Paraná. The operation was inaugurated last Friday (27th) and is part of the R$8 billion investment plan announced by the company in 2019.

The new manufacturing center in Paraná cost R$1 billion and will allow Seara to advance its expansion strategy in higher value-added products, particularly in the chicken breaded segment. Today, Seara – which is the pork and poultry arm of JBS – already holds more than 30% of the Brazilian chicken cuts market share, according to research by the Kantar Institute. However, the company’s expectation is to advance in this market.

To this end, it invests in technology. The brand’s new plant will be able to industrialize products that were previously unavailable on the domestic market. According to the CEO of JBS, Gilberto Tomazoni, the penetration of chicken fingers in Brazilian homes is still low, at around 30%, when compared to markets such as the United Kingdom (66%) and the United States (54%).

“When we talk about brands, we have a very strong focus on consumption to make changes. Brazilians love empanados, the market wasn’t growing as much because the supply didn’t live up to what the consumer was demanding,” he commented. The plant opened in Rolândia has capacity for expansion, including five more breaded and two sausage lines.

Expansion depends on consumption indicators

According to Campos, the capacity of the plants will be expanded according to consumer indications, following the differences already present in the company’s products such as innovation, quality and flavor. This expansion will be defined according to business growth and market demand. When this happens, the unit could reach 6,000 employees.

The new plant for the production of sausages will be the most automated at Seara in Brazil and one of the most modern at JBS in the world. According to information from JBS, the factory will have the second largest sausage cooking and smoking oven in the world (the first is in Romania) and will have robots for the production and packaging conveyors.

The factory also comes with sustainability protocols, such as rainwater collection and the use of electric vehicles for internal traffic. With these stages of expansion of the complex carried out in 2023, three production lines are already in operation, two for breaded products and one for sausage, adding 700 new jobs to the manufacturing unit.