Rainbow Plans on Branding

Rainbow Chicken aimed to make frozen poultry bigger than fish in supermarkets, the country's biggest poultry producer has said, arguing that its branding strategy was starting to catch on.

Business Report of South Africa reports that marketing and customer director Scott Pitman said fish, including hake, made up over half of sales from upright supermarket freezers. Rainbow's goal was for the poultry category to be bigger than fish by 2012, he said.

This target was prompted by a view that consumers eat chicken more times a week than fish. "Rainbow aims to drive the chicken category growth," Mr Pitman said.

Products stocked in upright refrigerators (fridges) display goods targeted at higher income groups. Currently, the upright fridge is dominated by fish products.

Rainbow chief executive Miles Dally said, "Our obsession with building brands is that this is the only way to build long-term shareholder value".

Traditionally, the core business of the biggest poultry producers, Rainbow and Astral Foods, has been in commodotised chicken, targeted at lower market segments. The biggest consideration has been profits at competitive prices.

More recently, Rainbow has been chasing the higher margins that accompany branding.

The company said it had already had success in producing value-add products for the working class. Mr Pitman said chilled processed meats, Simply Chicken Polony and Simply Chicken Viennas, which had only been launched three years ago would turn over 165 million rand (ZAR) in the year to March. The Rainbow target was ZAR 300 million the following year, according to Business Report.

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