The world's biggest meat company started building a lab grown beef plant
JBS, which sold $86 billion of food in 2025, announced in 2023 that it had started building a $41 million lab grown beef plant in Spain. It also owns most of the chicken company that sells to Kroger and Chick-fil-A.
JBS calls itself the largest protein company in the world by net revenue, in a document JBS N.V. filed with the SEC on May 12, 2026. The company reported record net revenue of $86 billion for 2025, up 12 percent from 2024. It employs more than 282,000 people, operates in more than 20 countries and sells to more than 330,000 customers in almost 200 countries. Its brands include Swift, Seara and Pilgrim's Pride.
On June 14, 2023, JBS announced it had begun building what it called the world's largest cultivated beef protein plant, in San Sebastian, Spain, with an investment of $41 million. The money went through BioTech Foods, a Spanish company JBS owns most of. The release called the site BioTech Foods' first commercial scale industrial plant, said it would produce more than 1,000 tons a year, and said it was expected to be completed in the middle of 2024. BioTech Foods' own page, dated January 17, 2023, describes the site as the largest capacity in southern Europe.
JBS also owns about 82 percent of Pilgrim's Pride, the chicken company, according to the Pilgrim's Form 10-K filed February 12, 2026. That report names Chick-fil-A among its chain restaurant customers and Kroger, Costco, Publix and H-E-B among its American grocery chain and wholesale club customers. In the U.K. and Europe it lists McDonald's, Sainsbury's, Tesco and Waitrose, and in Mexico, Walmart. The filing says no single customer accounted for ten percent or more of its sales in 2025 or 2024.
