A leading chicken processing firm in the North, Moy Park, is to acquire its rival O'Kane Poultry.
The combined firm will employ 8,500 people, with 5,000 of them based in Northern Ireland. Up to 30 redundancies are expected following the merger.
Moy Park is owned by Brazilian food giant Marfrig. Its CEO Nigel Dunlop said the acquisition would greatly increase the company's scale and capacity, giving it a foothold in the turkey meat sector.
O'Kane Poultry chairman Billy O'Kane said the merger would mean the future of its producers was assured. He said the deal was was good news for the local agri-food industry and for the wider Northern Ireland economy.
The acquisition process is subject to due diligence and is expected to take several months.
Moy Park is one of the best known chicken brands in the Republic of Ireland, and is a major supplier to Tesco Ireland, Dunnes Stores, Musgrave Retail Partners (Supervalu & Centra) and Lidl in addition to Superquinn and local distributors including Costcutter, Spar and Vivo.
O'Kane's chicken and turkey products are available from Marks & Spencer, Tesco Ireland and Dunnes Stores.
The two firms currently sell around 200 million chickens and 1.5 million turkeys every year. They have contracts with around 760 local producers.
