October 23, 2009

South African poultry group Sovereign Foods has reaped the benefits of its ZAR700 million (US$94.5 million) investment in a Mandela Bay chicken breeding and processing operation.

Initiated three years ago, the investment programme had helped boost the company's revenue by 56 percent to ZAR909 million in 2009 and sales by 47 percent to 76,000 tonnes this year,

Demand has also increased as chicken was more affordable than most other meat types, said Sovereign Foods' Rocklands chief executive officer Mike Davies.

Production has been increasing steadily and the number of employees has nearly doubled, he said.

The investment has created the capacity to process up to 60 million birds per year, and a new ZAR61 million hatchery is currently breeding 680,000 day-old chicks per week but a maximum capacity of six million eggs being incubated can be achieved, he said.

Davies said the investment also trains and supports emerging farmers and company employees.

The investment programme includes a quality school to ensure the chicken processing plant meets international health and quality standards, driver training, an agricultural graduate training programme, an apprentice school, an advanced management programme and company-wide computer training.

Sovereign Foods is the holding company of the principal operations within the broiler industry that cover breeding activities, broiler farming, food processing, animal feed milling and value-added poultry processing and trading.