If the South African government fails to level the playing field, the country’s entire chicken industry will be gone by December this year, says Scott Pitman, managing director of the consumer division at major food producer RCL Foods.
This after the publication of the sale of 13 of its farms in the Camperdown region in Kwazulu-Natal. The decision to sell the properties was taken in October last year.
“We’ve been speaking to the government about the problems in the chicken industry for five years. But we saw no light at the end of the tunnel and decided that to stay alive we had to cut back on the least profitable lines,” Pitman says.
The farms, comprising just over 1 000ha in total, range between 10ha and 440ha in size, and are valued at between R9 million and R60 million.
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