Jeanne Groenewald founded Elgin Free Range Chickens starting off with 100 hens in her back yard.
ago and have run it myself from
scratch.The business is made up of different sectors. We run a breeding operation and have a hatchery where we employ 50 people. We have our own farmland as well as industrial land from where we operate the business,” she explained. For the next stage of the business Elgin Free Range Chickens uses additional farms as contract growers that have already established poultry housing. That side of the business em- ploys another 70 people. “Most of our contract growers are also involved with other activities, including growing fruit and vegetables and some even have their own vineyards.” “Then we run our own abattoir processing facility situated in the Elgin industrial area employing a total of 550 people. Here we slaughter the birds and further process them into added value products in our own packaging. Everything is kept in-house as all our products are distributed to our own
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retail outlets and others by our logistics team. We currently have 11 retail stores employing 100 staff with more outlets in the pipeline planned to open next year,” she continued. There are around 56,000 breeding hens in the breeding unit at Elgin Free Range Chickens at any one time. The broiler units produce 128,000 broilers a week. “We have traditionally used the Cobb breed but have recently switched to the Arbor Acres breed,” Jeanne added. “Altogether I have six growers af- filiated to the business and we process around 6.6 million broilers a year.”
Philosophy The key ethos of Elgin Free Range Chickens over the years – and which has helped foster the company’s growth – has been its attention to detail in rearing a healthy bird. “Our phi- losophy is to remove any form of stress from the birds, so we
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