Dumping, feed costs, load-shedding threaten SA poultry industry

South Africa's poultry industry is well positioned for long-term growth, but it is currently in distress due to a raft of local and global challenges. Glenneis Kriel describes the impact of these threats on producers.

- Glenneis Kriel

The value of South Africa’s poultry industry has grown by R3 billion over the past three years to R59 billion, primarily because of additional investments by industry participants.

This is according to Izaak Breitenbach, general manager of the South African Poultry Association (SAPA), who spoke at the organisation’s ‘State of the Poultry Industry Address’, an annual media briefing held online.

While the Poultry Sector Master Plan called for an investment of R1,5 billion by 2022, the industry had already invested R1,8 billion, with another R600 million earmarked for investment by the end of 2024.

According to Breitenbach, the growth had enabled the industry to expand production from 19,7 million to 22,5 million birds a week, and to create 1 900 new jobs. It had also created an additional 2 000 jobs throughout the value chain, and this was expected to increase to 2 600 by 2024.

From 2019 to 2022, SAPA had also managed to establish 21 new contract growers, at a cost of about R35 million each, with the aim of establishing 50 new growers by the end of 2024. The organisation had also spent R466 million to cover the cash flow of emerging black contract growers, which would increase to R474 million in 2023, as part of SAPA’s support programme for emerging farmers, Breitenbach said.

INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE

In addition, the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP), in collaboration with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, recently concluded a competitiveness study which confirmed that South Africa’s poultry production competitiveness had improved over the past few years.