Sanderson Farms Inc's Business Segments

The Registrant was incorporated in Mississippi in 1955, and is a fully-integrated poultry processing company engaged in the production, processing, marketing and distribution of fresh and frozen chicken products. In addition, the Registrant is engaged in the processing, marketing and distribution of processed and minimally prepared chicken.

The Registrant sells ice pack, chill pack, bulk pack and frozen chicken, in whole, cut-up and boneless form, primarily under the Sanderson Farms® brand name to retailers, distributors, and casual dining operators principally in the southeastern, southwestern, northeastern and western United States, and to customers who resell frozen chicken into export markets. During its fiscal year ended October 31, 2016, the Registrant processed approximately 507 million chickens, or approximately 3.8 billion dressed pounds.

The Registrant’s fresh and frozen chicken operations presently encompass 9 hatcheries, 8 feed mills and 10 processing plants, and those figures do not include the facilities under construction at its new St. Pauls, North Carolina complex. The Registrant began operations at the new St. Pauls hatchery in November 2016, and expects to begin processing chickens at the new processing plant in January 2017. The Registrant has one prepared chicken plant.

The Registrant has contracts with operators of approximately 690 grow-out farms that provide it with sufficient housing capacity for its current operations. The Registrant also has contracts with operators of 208 breeder farms.

Processed chicken is first salable as an ice packed, whole chicken. The Registrant adds value to its ice packed, whole chickens by removing the giblets, weighing, packaging and labeling the product to specific customer requirements and cutting and deboning the product based on customer specifications. The additional processing steps of giblet removal, close tolerance weighing and cutting increase the value of the product to the customer over whole, ice packed chickens by reducing customer handling and cutting labor and capital costs, reducing the shrinkage associated with cutting, and ensuring consistently sized portions.

The Registrant adds additional value to the processed chicken by deep chilling and packaging whole chickens in bags or combinations of fresh chicken parts, including boneless product, in various sized, individual trays under the Registrant’s brand name, which then may be weighed and pre-priced, based on each customer’s needs. This chill pack process increases the value of the product by extending shelf life, reducing customer weighing and packaging labor, and providing the customer with a wide variety of products with uniform, well designed packaging, all of which enhance the customer’s ability to merchandise chicken products.

To satisfy some customers’ merchandising needs, the Registrant freezes the chicken product, which adds value by meeting the customers’ handling, storage, distribution and marketing needs and by permitting shipment of product overseas where transportation time may be as long as 60 days.