Watchdog begins scrutiny of major Anzco–Greenlea meat sector deal

Tuesday, 23 June 2026

A deal that would make New Zealand’s already highly consolidated, largely offshore-owned meat processing sector even more so is in the works, and the Commerce Commission today released an outline of the issues it’s considering in whether to approve the deal or not.

Japan’s Itoham Yonekyu Holdings owns Christchurch-based Anzco, which is offering $800 million for Greenlea Group, which processes meat in the Waikato.

Both companies process and supply beef products to domestic and export markets, while Anzco also processes and supplies lamb products, and is many times bigger than the Hamilton-based Greenlea.

Both companies also export most of their beef while domestically supplying supermarkets, foodservice operators, and food manufacturers with things like processed beef products, and other parties with things like offal, pelts, skins, casings, wool and rendered products, as well as animal-derived serums and blood proteins for global customers in the biotech sector.

Read more:

• Is foreign capital moving deeper into New Zealand dairy’s value chain?

• Shane Jones casts doubt at Fieldays on Government planning red tape reforms

• As it happened: What experts say about the economic outlook for farmers

Greenlea is privately owned by the Egan family, who usually feature on the NBR Rich List.

The companies would become the third largest meat processor in the country by revenue, at a combined $2.8 billion - comprising Anzco’s $2.2b annual turnover and Greenlea’s $600m. The latter is more profitable than the former.

The largest meat processor in New Zealand is Silver Fern Farms, which is half owned locally and half by Chinese state owned enterprise Shanghai Maling, a subsidiary of Bright Foods. The second largest, Alliance Group, is a strategic corporate partnership between a major Irish multinational Dawn Meats and New Zealand farmer-shareholders.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has criticised some of the major deals made with offshore buyers recently, including the Dawn Meats deal for half of Alliance, as well as the sale of the Mainland Group, Fonterra’s consumer brands, to France’s Lactalis and others. His comments concur with others than New Zealand companies are often undervalued at home and sold for a song for deep-pocketed offshore buyers.

Meat industry commentator Allan Barber, writing in Farmers Weekly, said the deal was “strategically smart” from Anzco, “although the purchase price seems eye-wateringly high, as much as twice as much as some industry players expected.

“The likelihood is Itoham [Anzco] has paid a substantial premium to buy the last available high-volume beef processor in New Zealand.”

Competition

Anzco has argued the deal would not lessen competition as the parties’ operations do not overlap geographically, and they would continue to operate as separate entities.

More specifically it says the deal would not see reduced competition in either the North Island market for the acquisition of cattle for processing, nor the national market for the domestic supply of processed beef products.

Its reasons include that there is strong competition from existing, established beef processors in the North Island, including Silver Fern Farms and Affco; ANZCO and Greenlea are geographically separate; there’s “significant spare processing capacity among the other North Island beef processors (even during the peak of the season)”, meaning competitors could increase production if they needed to, and price competition for cattle in the North Island is dynamic “with farmers being well-informed of prices offered by different processors and can readily switch their supply from one processor to another on a week-by-week basis.

“No single processor can sustainably acquire cattle at below-market rates, as farmers will simply sell to the highest bidder,” Anzco said in its submission.

In the domestic supply of beef products it says even merged, the merged parties’ market share is low; competition is strong, and “domestic customers typically source beef products from multiple processors and frequently switch between suppliers based on price, quality and service”.

The commission will test these arguments in its investigation to ensure competition is genuinely not lessened in the relevant markets. Submissions will be received on the deal from now and a decision is likely to be made by August 18 this year, although could be later.