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The ‘superior’ chicken king

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Kholofelo Maponya, CEO of Daybreak Farms, says his company produces 1.3?million birds and 2?million eggs every week. PHOTO: ELIZABETH SEJAKE
Kholofelo Maponya, CEO of Daybreak Farms, says his company produces 1.3?million birds and 2?million eggs every week. PHOTO: ELIZABETH SEJAKE

Fast-forward 28 years and Maponya is now the largest black poultry farmer in the country after he rescued Daybreak Farms and the 2 600 employees whose jobs were at risk almost two years ago. He now holds a 7% share of the poultry market.

Coincidentally, his father, Matome Maponya, also rescued a struggling butchery in 1976 and turned it into a thriving business.

Daybreak produces 1.3 million birds and 2 million eggs every week at its abattoirs in Delmas and Sundra, Mpumalanga. The company also has two breeder farms in Limpopo and contracted egg-layer farms.

“We take 2 million eggs to our hatcheries in Settlers in Limpopo, where we set the eggs – just like a hen would sit on the eggs – for a number of days until hatching.

“The hatchability is not 100%, so we lose a few eggs, but we end up with about 1.6 million to 1.7 million chicks a week and place 1.5 million, making provision for mortality, on our own farms and contract grower farms,” said Kholofelo of Matome Maponya Investments.

It took him three years of knocking at the Public Investment Corporation’s doors for funding before the corporation approved the deal.

Since the deal’s approval in April, he has turned Daybreak around, changing management and ensuring that Shoprite Checkers, his main supporter, continued to sell his chickens, Daybreak Superior.

“My biggest supporter is Shoprite Checkers, and they’ve undertaken to launch our new products and brands in their shops. Shoprite Checkers were the most empowering for me because they didn’t run away when they heard that a black man took over this business.

“If I am to have a national platform, they are my biggest support,” said Kholofelo, who is also a prominent property developer.

While he acknowledges that he is not like other black entrepreneurs – he is Johannesburg property mogul Richard Maponya’s nephew – he says persistence paid off with this deal.

He has witnessed the hardest times in business, including having to drop out from the then Technikon Witwatersrand in 1995 – while he was in his third year studying accounting – so he could help his ailing father save his business.

“After 1994, most of our families went out of business because business started looking for new criteria. Black people, because they were small business, were seen as risky business.

“All business went to big established white companies and we were left in the lurch and never grew. We never grew with our democracy. Democracy actually grew white business. Hence I ended up saying: ‘I can’t grow my father’s poultry business, let me go and acquire an established one and work on the same principles that are seen as the model for success.’ We came here and paid what we paid to buy the business. It’s not something we just woke up and started, though,” said Kholofelo.

He is working on a new distribution model, which will involve hundreds of containers located in the townships to distribute chickens closer to the communities that buy them. Kholofelo, a shareholder at SA Home Loans who refers to himself as a “serial entrepreneur”, is also planning another breeder farm in Limpopo.

“My father made most of his money by collecting chicken intestines that were not used back then in the abattoirs. They only realised later when they came to the township and found him driving a BMW how profitable [the intestines] were,” said Kholofelo, chuckling at the thought that such “delicacies” were discarded.

“My father bought a butchery that had gone out of business and started the same model. I’m basically reinventing the wheel. I’m working with cooperatives and entrepreneurs to distribute and empower them,” said Kholofelo.

He views chicken dumping by Brazil in South Africa and the “commoditisation” of the poultry market, where traders determine the price of products, as the biggest threats to the poultry industry, which is the biggest employer in the agricultural sector.

“The borders were supposed to be controlled, but we have about 7 000 abattoirs approved worldwide to deliver chicken here, but there’s not a single inspector going there to check standards.

“The safest thing for a South African in terms of health is to look for any packet that says ‘SA poultry’ because you can be sure of the health standards. South Africa maintains the highest standards internationally,” said Kholofelo.

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