The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

AFTER nearly going out of business almost one year ago, an Abaco-based poultry producer is “back to full speed” despite feed cost hikes driving its prices up by 10 per cent in January.

“We are doing about 10,000-15,000 birds per week,” said Lance Pinder, operations manager of Abaco Big Bird Chicken Farm, a family-owned and operated business since 1995.

“Our staff is back to full time. We are skipping by, but all the workers are back to their full-time work now, which is good for the economy. The processing crew is 22 and we have about 15 ground crew.

“We’re doing better than we were. We were going to pretty much shut down our operation. Things are looking better. The Government is certainly doing its part in terms of helping with all the imports, slowing them down when need be, so our inventory isn’t quite as high as it normally is.”

But Mr Pinder added: “The corn prices are what’s killing us. The feed cost is very high. The feed cost rose about 40 per cent in November, so we had to do a lot of price hikes in January because the the chickens in November come to market in January.

“It’s still a very tough business to be in. I think in January we had to raise our prices probably 10 per cent. We had to go up and it may be higher. Some items go up quicker than others, it just depends.”

On the feed costs issue, Mr Pinder said foreign competitors were effectively in the same position. “I guess we are in sort of the same boat because their prices are going up as ours are going up, but then you have a problem with, say Brazil, because their government is subsidising their feed costs.

“In the US, their farmers do get some subsidies but the government doesn’t intervene on the feed costs. Feed costs in the last six months have probably gone up 60 per cent. We’ve never seen that big a jump.”