JEREMY MAGGS: Alright, let’s move from prisons to chickens. After a 12-month reprieve, punitive trade tariffs on imported chicken have again been implemented. These duties, you’ll remember, were initially suspended in July last year, if I’m not mistaken, over concerns regarding the impact of these duties on soaring food prices.
IZAAK BREITENBACH: We are really struggling at the moment, as I’ve mentioned, because of high raw material prices, infrastructure, load shedding and then dumped chicken, not normal imports, but only the dumped chicken. Now, what this duty will do for us is that it’ll give us the breathing space to carry on investing in this industry, to carry on creating economic growth in the industry and the longer value chain, as well as doing transformation.
JEREMY MAGGS: I understand that, but the reality is you’ve still got to survive and there’s no guarantee that you’re going to keep prices at the current levels. IZAAK BREITENBACH: You’re correct, those were the major drivers during 2022 and we’ve seen an increase in raw material costs probably until January this year. Then we’ve seen some relief in terms of the raw material costs since January. That helps us quite a lot. Having said that, there’s no guarantee that we will have a continuation of a reduction in raw material cost, in other words, feed cost for the next six months. But at least as we sit here, the picture is a little bit more rosy.