Silver Fern Farms has lifted its annual profit by more than $24 million in the past financial year, and wiped more than $160m off its debt.
For the year ended September 2015, the country's biggest meat company reported a profit of $24.9m after tax, up from $500,000 in 2014.
The co-operative was pleased with the result, which had come from mainly selling assets and reducing inventories, chairman Rob Hewett said.
"We were New Zealand's biggest beef farmers. We had a very big beef programme with McDonalds Corporation which we exited, we don't own the animals anymore, we still supply them the animals but we buy them off our farmers as we process them instead of owning them ourselves.
"That's taken a significant amount inventory value off our books and we've also continued to drive our meat inventory levels down across all species as well. A large part of the debt reduction has come from those two asset sales."
The company has slashed its debt by $120.9m.
The proposed partnership with China's largest meat processor, Shanghai Maling, was going through the Overseas Investment Office process now, Mr Hewett said.
However, he did not know long it would take, but if and when it is approved it should put the company's books back in the black.
"We will be in a zero debt position at transaction completion, in fact we'll have cash in the bank... some wherebetween $5m and $70m, at the start of the season.
"We're expecting to repatriate some of that cash back to our shareholders prior to the transaction completing."
