Pilgrim's Pride to Close Dallas Processing Facility by Late September as Part of Ongoing Efficiency Plan

GREELEY, Colo., July 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (NYSE: PPC) today announced plans to close its chicken-processing plant in Dallas, Texas, within 60 days as part of its continuing effort to reduce costs and operate more efficiently.  

The Dallas plant is scheduled to close by September 30, 2011.  Production from the Dallas plant will be consolidated into several other Pilgrim's facilities in the region, including the processing and prepared-foods plants in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, thus improving their capacity utilization.  Other live production operations in Northeast Texas will continue to function.  Pilgrim's contract growers who supply birds to the Dallas plant will begin supplying the other company plants following the consolidation.  There will be no disruption in supply of product to Pilgrim's customers.  

Approximately 1,000 hourly and salaried employees who work at the Dallas facility will be affected by the plant closing.  Pilgrim's Pride expects to be able to offer positions at other facilities to interested employees.  The company will provide transition programs to employees who are not retained in order to assist them in securing new employment, filing for unemployment and obtaining other applicable benefits.  

"While the decision to close a plant and eliminate jobs is always painful, we must make better use of our assets given the challenges facing our industry from record-high feed costs and an oversupply of chicken," said Bill Lovette, president and chief executive officer.  "A key component of that effort is improving our capacity utilization through production consolidation and other operational changes.  By closing the Dallas facility, we can consolidate that production volume at three other plants and help those sites run closer to full capacity.  In addition, we will eliminate the cost associated with transporting live birds from northeast Texas to the Dallas processing plant and shipping offal from Dallas back to our protein conversion plant in Mt. Pleasant.  This will significantly reduce our costs and allow us to operate more efficiently.  In addition, we believe it will go a long way toward helping position Pilgrim's to emerge from the current industry down-cycle as a leaner, more competitive company."

Lovette said there are no plans to close any other processing facilities at this time.

About Pilgrim's Pride

Pilgrim's employs approximately 42,000 people and operates chicken processing plants and prepared-foods facilities in 12 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and Mexico.  The Company's primary distribution is through retailers and foodservice distributors.  For more information, please visit www.pilgrims.com.  

SOURCE Pilgrim's Pride Corporation