Portuguese 
English 
Spanish 
8 min of reading 
0 comments 
In 2025, Marfrig and BRF merged to create MBRF — one of the largest animal protein companies on the planet. Less than a year later, the Brazilian giant gave a strong response about its thoughts on the future of meat: it invested US$ 70 million (R$ 348 million) in a single industrial plant in Uruguay. The result is a factory that now produces 500,000 hamburgers per day, dominates 70% of supermarket shelves in Uruguay under the Sadia brand, and accounts for 30% of all beef exports from the country. While part of the world debates whether it should eat less meat, MBRF Uruguay simply decided to produce more — much more.
The expansion was formalized with the inauguration of the new production structure in Tacuarembó, in northern Uruguay, where the company has been operating for approximately 20 years. The ceremony brought together company executives and local authorities at a moment considered strategic by MBRF’s leadership: the same period in which global trade tensions are pressuring animal protein supply chains and countries like China, the USA, and Japan are competing for guaranteed access to reliable suppliers outside unstable zones.
“Uruguay is a strategic market for the company, recognized for the quality of production,” said Miguel Gularte, CEO of MBRF, on the occasion. The statement is not just formal — it translates a long-term bet on a country that, despite having only 3.4 million inhabitants, exports meat to more than 100 nations and maintains sanitary standards accepted by the most demanding markets in the world.
-
A Brazilian meat giant invested R$ 348 million in Uruguay — and the plant now produces 500,000 hamburgers a day while the world discusses whether or not to eat less meat…
-
Candy giant announces closure of its only factory in Latrine America in São Paulo and more than 150 employees are caught by surprise.
-
Santa Catarina broke into the ranking of Brazil’s largest supermarkets with two chains that gross billions and now challenge giants that had dominated the top alone for years.
-
Brazil’s gasoline imports soar over 170% in April, exposing a rush for foreign supply amid rising global fuel prices, with the risk of direct pressure on pump prices.
The timing of the expansion is not coincidental. The Marfrig-BRF merger needed to show the market that it was capable of generating concrete synergies — not just on paper. The Tacuarembó unit delivers exactly that: measurable growth in capacity, new jobs, and consolidation of market position in a strategic territory, all at the same time.
What R$ 348 million bought in Tacuarembó
The investment was not to build a factory from scratch — it was to transform an already operational plant into one of the most advanced in Latin America. The R$ 348 million financed a complete expansion of production capacity, cold infrastructure, and sustainability.
The main result: hamburger production goes from 200 to 900 tons per month — a growth of 350%. In daily volume, this translates to approximately half a million hamburgers leaving the plant every 24 hours. To put it in perspective: at this production pace, the Tacuarembó unit could supply the entire population of Rio de Janeiro with one hamburger per day.
- Hamburgers: from 200 to 900 tons/month (+350%) — ~500,000 units per day
- Daily slaughter: from 900 to 1,400 animals (+55%)
- Pre-cooling chambers: capacity expanded from 1,800 to 2,800 animals
- New freezing tunnel: 21,000 boxes capacity
- Blood meal: 100 tons/month of utilized byproduct
- New jobs: 570 direct, total of 2,270 workers
Marcos Molina, chairman of MBRF, summarized the logic of the expansion: “This industrial model allows us to operate with greater scale, efficiency, safety, and standardization.” In the language of the protein industry, this means higher margins, lower unit costs, and the ability to compete globally with long-term contracts.
The slaughter capacity increased from 900 to 1,400 animals per day, a rise of about 55%. The pre-cooling chambers were expanded from 1,800 to 2,800 animals, and a new freezing tunnel with a capacity for 21,000 boxes was installed. The plant now also produces 100 tons of blood meal monthly, utilizing byproducts that were previously discarded or used less efficiently.
In terms of industrial efficiency, scale matters in a non-linear way. Doubling production does not mean doubling costs — it means distributing fixed costs of refrigeration, logistics, and specialized labor over a much larger volume of product. This arithmetic makes large industrial slaughterhouses almost impossible to contest by smaller competitors.
MBRF Uruguay: 30% of the country’s meat exports and 70% of retail with Sadia
The presence of MBRF Uruguay in the country goes far beyond a factory. The company has been operating in the Uruguayan market for approximately two decades and has consolidated a position difficult to contest: it controls about 30% of all beef exports from Uruguay — a country that is, proportionally to its size, one of the largest meat exporters in the world.
In the domestic retail market, the Sadia brand — which has been part of MBRF’s portfolio since the merger with BRF — holds 70% market share on Uruguayan supermarket shelves. It is a dominance rarely seen in protein categories in any country in the world. For a consumer in Montevideo or Rivera, the probability of putting a Sadia product in the cart is higher than any alternative.
The export markets for the Tacuarembó plant include the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe — exactly the group of countries that have most competed for guaranteed access to animal protein in the last three years. Uruguay has bilateral sanitary agreements with all these markets, making the MBRF plant a geopolitically valuable asset in a world of increasingly regionalized supply chains.
It is worth remembering that Brazil has also intensified its beef exports to these same destinations. Brazil exported 372,000 tons of beef to China in just two months — a pace that shows how Asian demand for South American protein is structurally high. MBRF, with operations in Brazil and Uruguay, captures this demand from both sides.
Uruguay’s position on the global meat map is also strategic for another reason: the country has not registered cases of foot-and-mouth disease for decades, maintains individual traceability of all cattle from birth, and has climatic conditions that allow extensive grazing on native pasture — an attribute that premium markets are increasingly willing to pay for. According to the National Meat Institute of Uruguay (INAC), the country exports meat to more than 100 destinations, with a growing focus on higher value-added cuts for the USA and Europe.
The company’s 20-year presence in Uruguay is also not trivial. Building relationships with local cattle suppliers, obtaining sanitary certifications for all destination markets, and training specialized labor takes time. Competitors wishing to replicate MBRF Uruguay’s position today would need at least a decade — and capital to sustain the operation during that period without guaranteed returns.
Renewable energy and the ESG argument that justifies the scale
The expansion of MBRF in Tacuarembó includes environmental components that directly respond to the ESG pressures of the animal protein sector — and that, not coincidentally, also reduce operational costs in the long term.
The plant now features wind turbines that account for approximately 10% of the unit’s energy consumption. In a sector that uses large volumes of energy for industrial refrigeration, having 10% of the demand covered by its own renewable sources is both an argument for sustainability reports and a partial protection against tariff volatility. Uruguay already has about 98% of its electricity matrix based on renewables — which makes the operation in the region inherently cleaner than equivalents in other countries.
Effluent treatment systems and byproduct utilization — such as the aforementioned blood meal — complete the environmental profile of the expansion. MBRF can present a case where scale growth and relative environmental impact reduction go hand in hand — an argument increasingly necessary for animal protein exporters who need to pass audits by European buyers with supply chain decarbonization targets.
For Brazil, this operation in Uruguay is not just a foreign investment by a national company. It is a demonstration of how the Brazilian protein industry — even under regulatory and reputational pressure — continues to expand its global footprint with operations that compete by the most demanding standards of international trade.
The geopolitical context also favors the strategy. With the Mercosur-European Union agreement advancing in negotiations, protein exporters from Uruguay and Brazil gain privileged access to a market of 450 million consumers with high income and willingness to pay for tracked and environmentally certified meat. The Tacuarembó plant, with its wind turbines and reuse systems, is positioned exactly to meet these buyers.
570 new jobs: what MBRF Uruguay represents for Tacuarembó
The impact of MBRF Uruguay’s expansion on the local labor market is immediate and measurable. The Tacuarembó unit will create 570 new direct jobs, raising the total number of workers at the plant to approximately 2,270 people.
In Tacuarembó, a city with about 90,000 inhabitants in the interior of Uruguay, a company that employs 2,270 people in a single industrial plant is one of the largest employers in the region. The multiplier of indirect jobs — suppliers, transportation, local services — tends to be significant in less diversified regional economies, where each industrial job generates between 2 and 4 additional positions in the local economy.
The announcement of the new jobs was highlighted by local authorities and the Uruguayan government, which sees attracting large-scale industrial investments as one of the few levers available to retain population and income in interior departments competing with the economic pull of Montevideo.
For MBRF, maintaining and expanding operations in Uruguay — instead of concentrating all expansion in Brazil — also has a regulatory logic. The Uruguayan business environment is consistently ranked as one of the most stable in Latin America, with low corruption, respected contracts, and relatively predictable exchange rates. Characteristics that, in the language of investors, translate into lower risk premiums and lower capital costs for long-term projects.
The expansion of MBRF Uruguay in Tacuarembó comes at a time when the Marfrig-BRF merger is still being processed by the market. The combination of the two companies created a group with enough scale to compete globally with JBS and Tyson Foods — but also with the urgent need to demonstrate operational synergies that justify the complexity of the integration. The Uruguayan plant, with its 350% growth in hamburgers and 570 new jobs, delivers exactly the kind of concrete result the market expected to see.
Uruguay is not just an extension of the Brazilian operation. It is increasingly an independent strategic asset — with access to markets that value traceability and sanitary standards, embedded in a renewable energy matrix, and with regulatory stability that complements Brazil’s scale advantages. While the world debates the future of meat on the menu, MBRF Uruguay has already made its decision: expand, modernize, and dominate the markets that still want animal protein with traceability, efficiency, and environmental certification.
Be the first to react!