Astrea was formed in 2011 by New Zealanders passionate about bringing innovation to the animal by-product processing industry in Brazil through better technology and a fully transparent business model ensuring full traceability of products and services and aligning the interests of both renderer and meat company.  

The founding shareholders were already active in Brazil in the agribusiness space with the development of a large pastoral dairy farming business in Bahia.  

In 2012 an agreement was signed between Astrea and Copagril, a large agribusiness cooperative located in Marechal Candido Rondon in the state of Paraná.  

Astrea set about building a next-generation rendering plant on site, sourcing leading edge and best-in-class technologies from around the world.  

The offal line was to be the first operational low temperature offal line in Brazil. In December of 2014 the offal processing began operations. 

In January 2015 the feather line was commissioned and a formal opening happened that same month. 

The Astrea plant is capable of processing material from up to 350,000 chickens a day to accommodate an eventual doubling of processing capacity on site. 

In 2016 Astrea began processing material from C.Vale, another cooperative in the region. The plant began processing around 300 tonnes of raw material a day. 

In January of 2021 ownership of the poultry processing plant passed to Lar, another large agribusiness cooperative active in the west of Paraná. Astrea then became a service renderer for Lar, processing material from what was now the UIA4 site, as well as other sites within the cooperative when required.  

Astrea continues to work to innovate in both plant and process. With its commitment to investment in technology and people, Astrea will continue to be a benchmark in excellence in by-product processing in Brazil and beyond.