The Northern Cape’s female-driven chicken enterprise, Warrenton Super Chicken, has spread it wings by accumulating much needed brand-value. The market essence for any venture is in promising consistency and Warrenton Super Chicken’s focus remains in soaring higher albeit the current import turbulences of the industry. Margaret Mothibi investigates...
“We have invested in our brand-value, our chicken is packaged in a manner that bears our brand-identity. Such an effort is much needed in weathering the market storms engulfing the poultry industry. Times are tough but we have managed to increase our staff to 41 employees and we are now rearing 15 000 chicks per month instead of the initial 10 000. We would like to attribute all of that to having formalised many aspects of our business and the very last thereto was the branding of our product,” explains Warrenton Super Chicken’s Managing Director Ms Mabel Motlhale.
www.warrentonsuperchicken.co.za asserts their differentiator as being “proudly brine free.” It goes on waxing lyrical on being female-driven, boasting an experienced team with business, production, marketing and abattoir management skills honed over many years as employees of what was then known under the previous owner as the
Doringfontein Broiler Farm. The farm- land was acquired by Ms Motlhale and other beneficiaries with the assistance of government through what was known as the Land Redistribution for Agricul- tural Development (LRAD) grant.
Notably, testimony to having taken to the water like a duck in relation to food safety is in how they go about guaran- teeing high nutrition value without undermining poultry as a sensitive product in the food processing stakes.
“Of utmost importance is that as new entrants and historically disadvantaged persons, we should up the ante at all times in securing our market share by enlisting the support of all segments of society. Just how do you do that when your brand and value for money promise are a flop? Hence we had to take into account the fact that con- scientising people to buy local has to be balanced with unending quality in relation to the product and marketing appeal, ”asserted Ms Motlhale.
Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Warrenton Super Chicken successfully went for glory in the provin- cial and national 2016 instalments of the prestigious Female Entrepreneur of the Year Awards by scooping the honours in the category Top Entrepreneur in Food Processing. Ms Motlhale says having won both at province and national was humbling and that such recognition could only serve to inspire.
In their quest of ensuring that they adhere to the best production practices, membership of the South African Poultry Association (SAPA) also brought the necessary gravitas to their broiler houses. And now Ms Motlhale says they are not that worried about the impor- ting of cheap chicken products threat for now, emphasizing the need for “consumer education.” “Well we are awaiting the necessary accreditation that would allow us into Southern African Development Community nations such as Lesotho where we have already gone to test the waters and we remain confident that we will crack more markets in the near future.”
The Chief Executive Officer of the industry’s mouthpiece and standard bearer, South African Poultry Asso- ciation (SAPA) that was established in Kimberley in 1904 is Kevin Lovell. He embraced Warrenton Super Chicken for having found a nesting in the asso- ciation. “We have created a whole new structure, unlike some of the other agricultural bodies, when instead of having a separate body for small farmers whether they were egg or broiler farmers, we kind of said you either produce eggs or you produce broilers, whether you big or small and that is kind of where we at in the picture,”says CEO Lovell whilst pressed to attend to other urgent matters.
Despite Warrenton Super Chicken not being deterred by what has led to massive job losses with South Africa’s big producers finding themselves on the brink of collapse, Ms Matlhale does concede that the cost of chicken feed is exponential and might clip the wings of many broiler farmers. The FairPlay Movement which is vehemently op- posed to what it regards as the “dum- ping of chicken in South Africa under production costs, ”stated on its Facebook page that there is an inextricable link between the current high prices of chicken feed and the capture of our South African markets.
