When Clive Tegere started a two-person chicken hatchery, working with his mother in the family garage, he didn’t expect it to grow so rapidly into a multi-million business producing up to 250 000 day-old chicks every week.
Tegere now owns the Northroost Hatchery in Limpopo province, having recently bought out his former joint venture partners with support from the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).
His success is featured in the latest issue of the Poultry Bulletin, official journal of the SA Poultry Association (SAPA).
Tegere, a former Johannesburg actuary, started the KC Hatchery in 2016, but soon saw the demand for a bigger operation in the area. With the support of joint venture partners Country Bird and Bushvalley Chickens, the R56 million Northroost Hatchery opened in in Makhado (formerly Louis Trichardt) in 2022.
His investment partners remain his two biggest customers – Country Bird supplies Northroost with all its eggs and Bushvalley takes nearly half of the day-old chicks it produces. Tegere also ensures the continued supply of quality chicks to the informal market – the reason his original business was founded.
He said scaling up from a small hatchery to a big business entailed more than just delivering more chicks every week. “I’ve learnt, and keep learning, so many lessons about business, legal and environmental matters, accounting and the intricacies of governance and compliance.”
The buyout was daunting, but he was happy to have done it.
“We are operating at full capacity, our customers are happy, our plant is performing well, and our hatch rate and chick quality are up there with the best. Our main task is to ensure we sustain this performance,” the new owner said.
