Greeley’s Pilgrim’s Pride offers $500M in unsecured notes

GREELEY — Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. (Nasdaq: PPC) is offering $500 million in 10-year unsecured notes to qualified institutional buyers, according to documents filed Wednesday with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a media statement issued Wednesday, the company said it intends to apply $350 million of the sale’s proceeds toward debt payments, with the balance to be used for “general corporate purposes.”

The Greeley-based chicken processor employs about 35,500 people and operates chicken processing plants and prepared-foods facilities in 12 states, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Its primary distribution is through retailers and food-service distributors. Brazilian meatpacker JBS S.A.…