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Johannesburg - SA poultry producers' shares were mostly down on Monday in a weak market after Pretoria opened its doors to US chicken imports under a deal reached at the weekend.
READ: Poultry deal between SA, US finalised
Poultry producer Astral Foods [JSE:ARL] fell 4.05% to R172.44 rand by 16:05 GMT, Quantum Foods [JSE:QFH] fell 3.30% percent to R3.52.
RCL Foods [JSE:RCL], formerly Rainbow Chicken bucked the trend to rise 1.49% to R17.76.
Astral warned in May that if a quota on US poultry imports is agreed to on the back of the Agoa renewal, it was likely to negatively impact local producers due to additional volumes of poultry products in the local market.
Analysts said the market sentiment was generally negative, due to the weak local currency and it was too early to determine whether or not shares of South African poultry producers will be hard hit by the agreement.
"The market is trading negative today. Industrial stocks right over the board are taking a bit of a hammering. In particular, you can look at the chicken stocks, they dropped," said Rigardt Maartens, a portfolio manager at PSG Securities.
"Once the market starts to recover, all the industrial shares and food shares will start to pick up again."
On Saturday Department of trade and industry minister, Rob Davies, said the US will export 65 000 tonnes a year of poultry shipments to South Africa, a deal which should help smooth the passage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).
ALSO READ: US welcomes SA poultry deal
