February 15, 2023

 

A look at China's broiler production sector

 

China's poultry meat output totaled 23.8 million tonnes in 2021 — a year-on-year increase of 0.8% — while total poultry slaughtered was 15.74 billion birds, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

 

In 2021, 6.773 billion white feather broilers were slaughtered; Shandong, Liaoning, Fujian, Hebei and Jiangsu were the top five producing provinces, slaughtering a combined 5.485 billion birds and accounting for 81% of the national white-feather broiler slaughter volume.

 

Provinces with a slaughter volume of 50-300 million birds are mainly in China's north and northeast regions. Other than Fujian province, which has a slaughter volume of more than 1.3 billion birds, the slaughter volumes of white feather broilers in the south and southwest regions are relatively small.

 

Shandong is the top-producing province with a slaughter volume of 2.875 billion white feather broilers. This exceeds the province's total poultry release volume of 2.635 billion in 2021. There were 203 broiler slaughterhouses in Shandong in the same year, with a combined slaughtering volume of 3.683 billion birds (including other broiler species). On average, each slaughterhouse slaughtered 18.17 million broilers per year.

 

As for slaughter enterprises, Hefeng slaughtered 700 million white feather chickens last year, ranking first among such enterprises. It aims to expand to 900 million birds in 2024. Shengnong currently has plans to expand its slaughter capacity to one billion birds in the next few years.

 

Due to a recent policy prohibiting the sale of live poultry, more yellow-feather broiler breeders are exploring the chilled sales chain. Lihua, for instance, has ventured into the slaughterhouse business, targeting to slaughter 50% of its yellow feather broilers in slaughterhouses by 2025. In 2021, the company's yellow broiler release volume totaled 370 million birds. This suggests Lihua could have the capacity to slaughter at least 185 million birds annually by 2025.

 

Meanwhile, the broiler slaughtering capacity of Wen's has reached about 250 million birds per shift yearly, a sharp increase of 92.3% compared with its 130 million birds slaughtering capacity announced in 2017. In the next five years, Wen's aims for its output of fresh chicken products to reach 50% of its broiler release volume.

 

In 2021, Wen's sold 1.1 billion broilers, ranking first in China.

- David Lin, eFeedLink