Meat + Poultry - September 2008 - 26

International appeal
One year after acquiring Swift & Co., JBS USA's
Wesley Batista weighs in on its global strategy
By Steve Kay
meatpoultry@sosland.com

MEAT&POULTRY: It's been one
year since JBS acquired Swift &
Company. What were the biggest issues you had to tackle?
How did you tackle them?
WESLEY BATISTA: The biggest challenge was to change
Swift and put it in the direction that we believe in, which
is to manage the company in
a very professional, organized
26

MEAT&POULTRY

September 2008

M&P: What, if any, "cultural"
differences did you ﬁnd?
WB: The culture with which
we are running the company now
is not any different to that in Brazil. The beef culture is global, it
is the same everywhere, from the
cow-calf level to the retailer.

Photo Copyright Eric Bellamy, Greeley Tribune

Editor's Note: Upon entering JBS
USA's headquarters in Greeley,
Colo, one of the ﬁrst languages
you might hear is Portuguese.
That's no surprise given it is
the native tongue of JBS's owners, the Batista family of Brazil. What's more interesting is
that you might also hear Spanish, Russian, Mandarin and
several other languages. Welcome to the global world that
JBS has brought to the U.S. red
meat industry.
JBS completed its acquisition of Swift and Company in
July 2007. M&P Contributing
Editor Steve Kay met with JBS
USA CEO Wesley Batista last
month to discuss the company's ﬁrst year in the U.S. and
its view of the future. Speaking mostly in English, Batista
was candid, straightforward
and upbeat about the business.
He displayed a passion for the
business that reminded Kay of
legendary IBP chairman Bob
Peterson. - S.K.

Batista

"Our daily slaughter
capacity in the
U.S. is 20,300
head per day
and we are
operating at under
90% of that."
and simple way, with a very
dynamic, lean and hands-on
structure. Our business is a details business so you have to
look at every cost. For example, Swift's structure had nine
layers from the CEO down to
managers. We now have four.

www.MEATPOULTRY.com

M&P: How would you deﬁne
progress to date for U.S./Australia Beef and U.S. Pork? Has this
progress failed to meet, met or
exceeded your expectations?
WB: Pork's performance is
in line with what we expected and we expect the next two
quarters to be better than the
ﬁrst two because that's normally
the case. As for beef, when we
bought Swift we told the market and shareholders that we
expected to improve the numbers by cutting costs, improving
yields and increasing revenues.
For the ﬁrst half of the year, we
have increased revenue by $800
million. We now expect to see
a $1.5 to $1.7 billion annual increase in revenues and cost reductions of $200 million to $220
million. This includes $40 million in cost savings in SG&A
(sales, general and administration), an $80 million reduction
in plant costs and a $100 million
improvement in yields (Editor's
note: On July 31, JBS said it had
reduced its total U.S. beef processing costs to $164 per head
from $212 a year earlier).

http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Meat + Poultry - September 2008

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