Continued growth in South Africa’s poultry industry depends on increasing exports and opening up new markets, according to Izaak Breitenbach of the SA Poultry Association (SAPA).
Chicken exports were one of two strategic necessities for the poultry industry, he said. The other was resolving issues that were holding up a mass vaccination against bird flu.
Breitenbach was speaking with Dr Tracy Davids of the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) at an online media event organised by FairPlay. The BFAP recently published a report showing continued improvement in the global competitiveness of the South African poultry industry.
The cost of producing a chicken in South Africa was now second only to Brazil, the world’s largest chicken exporter, the report said. South Africa has consistently ranked ahead of European countries, but the 2025 BFAP report showed it was now more competitive than the United States as well.
This price competitiveness meant that South Africa was well placed to compete in export markets, Breitenbach said. Increased chicken production, and higher export volumes, would also help the poultry industry to continue to provide affordable chicken for the South African market.
The export objective is to sell cooked chicken at premium prices to higher-income consumers abroad.
“Our counterparts overseas get a premium for their breast meat, and if we can get that premium, we will, in a way, cross-subsidise the brown meat that we produce,” Breitenbach said.
“It is strategically imperative that we open up the export market for two reasons. The one reason is that we have a limited market growth in terms of consumption. And the second one would be that we need to earn additional revenue to be competitive in terms of carcass income.”
South Africa exported 41 000 tonnes of chicken in 2025, most of which went to neighbouring states. The aim was to increase exports to the United Arab Emirates and to open up new markets in Saudi Arabia, Europe and the United Kingdom. This could happen relatively quickly, as Russia had shown.
“Ten years ago, Russia didn’t export a single kilogram of (chicken) meat. Today they export a significant amount of meat…in 10 years they’ve learned and they’ve grown their export volumes significantly.”
Dr Davids said expansion of chicken production to meet export demands would create jobs and benefit other industries. Half of South Africa’s maize production and three quarters of soya bean processing went into animal feed.
“If we can grow our poultry industry faster, because we can export competitively, then we can produce more maize, process more maize, produce more soybeans, process more soybeans,” she stated.
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This article first appeared in the FairPlay Bulletin, Thursday 12 March 2026 / Volume 26 / Edition 07. Read the original article here.
