DENVER -- Swift & Co., one of the nation's largest meatpacking companies, said Tuesday it will be sold to a Brazilian company in a $225 million cash deal.

JBS S.A. also will assume $1.2 billion in debt under the agreement with Swift's owners, HM Capital Partners of Dallas and Vail-based Booth Creek Management Corp.

Closing is expected in mid-July and is contingent on antitrust reviews.

The announcement comes about four months after Swift, which was targeted by a wide-scale immigration raid in December, said it was reviewing its operations and looking at a potential sale.

"Joining J&F to become the world's largest beef and pork processor, Swift should emerge even stronger, and that is good news for our partnership customers, our suppliers and our employees," Sam Rovit, Swift's president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Swift, which is headquartered in Greeley about 50 miles north of Denver, has beef and pork processing plants in six states and an operation in Australia.

In December, federal immigration authorities rounded up nearly 1,300 workers at Swift plants in Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Utah. The company said last month that it has refilled positions left vacant as a result of the raids.

Swift, which is privately held with publicly issued debt, initially estimated the financial impact of the raids at $30 million but has raised that estimate to as much as $50 million because it took longer than expected to return the beef plants to full production, which caused higher costs and led to lost business opportunities.

Based in Sao Paul, J&F Participacoes S.A. is the controlling shareholder of JBS, the largest beef processor in Latin America with 23 plants in Brazil and six in Argentina. It had nearly $1.8 billion in sales last year.

Rumors of J&F Participacoes S.A. buying Swift surfaced among other cattle industry insiders in April, according to the Greeley Tribune.