Country Bird Benefits from Lower Grain Cost

Poultry producer Country Bird expects a margin improvement at its new red meat businesses from next month as softer grain prices started to flow through the animal feeds supply chain, said Robbie Taylor, the company's financial director, according to Business Report.

Mr Taylor said margins in the year to June had been 'slim' due to a combination of grain price rises still flowing through and weak consumer spending.

Nevertheless, the group had added the red meat business as part of a long-term strategy to become a broader protein supplier in South Africa and the rest of the continent. Current group poultry operations, its core business, include South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia.

In the present market, margin expansion was more likely to come from lower maize prices than higher selling prices, he said.

Mr Taylor said an opportunity to enter the abattoir business had "maybe come earlier than we would have liked, but we got a very good facility at a very good price."

Country Bird acquired a 37.5 per cent stake in Silver Blade, the Klerksdorp-based abattoir. Former Zimbabwean beef operator, Rob Duncan, acquired a stake of the same size and the rest was bought by black empowerment partners.

Silver Blade said it intended to add a deboning facility to the abattoir to raise the company's margins. It had acquired a 50 per cent stake in the start-up trading business, Long Iron Meats.

Beef had experienced "maybe even more of a margin squeeze" than poultry, as feed was converted into protein less efficiently in cattle than in chickens, said Mr Taylor.

Poultry margins also recovered more quickly than beef margins when grain prices started falling, due to chickens' shorter growing cycle.

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