K&N’s Foods, the largest poultry operation in Pakistan, will inaugurate a poultry processing facility in Fulton, New York on January 3rd, 2014. The company will sell Halal chicken products in the United States and Canada under the brand name of “K&N's Foods USA, LLC”. Beginning in the spring of 2013, the company invested more than $5 million in the purchase and renovation of a former Birds Eye plant which will employ almost 200 people in the Fulton area. Initially, K&N will focus on value-added processing of poultry purchased from other slaughter plants. The target market for these products will be specialty ethnic stores, supermarkets, and food service operations.
FAS-Islamabad has worked closely with K&N’s to facilitate imports of U.S. poultry stock to Pakistan and assist in development of the new processing facility in the United States. The firm’s owner and CEO, Mr. Khalil Sattar, is a close contact of FAS. The FAS office provided assistance with visa referrals and by arranging meetings in the United States for company leaders and managers as they assessed the market, established the plant, and trained the staff in Halal practices
The K&N's group became involved in the poultry business in 1964. Today K&N’s is a modern, vertically-integrated poultry business with operations ranging from production of breeding stock to retail shops. The group is engaged in feed-milling, grandparent operations, parent stock production, pullet growing, hatching, broiler production, and processing. K&N’s has six broiler growing facilities, each with a capacity of 250,000 to 300,000 birds. The company has over 60% of market share in frozen and value addition chicken meat products. The primary outlet for these products is through a chain of highly rated K&N’s Chicken Stores, which sell chicken and value-added products in Pakistan’s 15
largest cities.
K&N’s has a strong relationship with Cobb-Vantress Inc., a U.S. poultry supply firm. Cobb 500, the world’s most efficient breed of parents and broilers, was introduced to Pakistan by K&N’s. CobbVantress and K&N’s also provides training to Pakistani farmers through seminars conducted by the U.S. experts. The growth of Cobb-Vantress and K&N’s in Pakistan is a model for the development of the country’s poultry industry.
In 2012, Pakistan imported $8 million worth of live poultry, mostly grandparent stock. The United States provided more than $3 million of these imports with the balance coming from France with $2 million and the United Kingdom with $1 million. FAS expects imports to continue to grow as the industry expands and is working with K&N and other producers to facilitate imports of U.S. poultry products.
