South Africa’s biggest chicken producer rules the roost

Astral Foods has reported a solid set of results for its 2025 financial year, as the poultry producer turned a weaker first-half performance into a strong second-half.

Astral is South Africa’s largest integrated poultry producer, with about 37 million birds on farm at any given point in time to supply approximately 5.2 million broilers per week to processing plants.

The company has poultry and feed operations, with its products sold under brands like County Fair, Mountain Valley and Goldi.

In the first half of Astral’s 2025 financial year, the company struggled with lower selling prices and higher input costs.

However, on Monday, 17 November 2025, Astral released its results for the year through September 2025, which showed that it managed to turn this around.

The company’s revenue grew by 10.4% to R22.6 billion,of which its poultry division contributed the lion’s share at 82.5%.

Astral attributed this strong revenue growth to increased broiler slaughter volumes and sales in the second half of the year, as well as a recovery in selling price realisations following selling price deflation during the first half of the year.

The company’s feed division was able to grow its external customer volumes through the year, and together with an increase in internal feed requirements, also supported revenue growth.

The poultry producer made an operating profit of R1.25 billion, up 10.9% compared to the 2024 financial year. Excluding one-off insurance gains in 2024, Astral’s operating profit grew by 42.8%.

Astral made a profit of R876.39 billion for the year, up 16.40%, and its earnings per share are up by a similar percentage of 2,276 cents per share. 

The company said the increase was supported by sound cost management with assistance from higher production volumes, which reduced the overhead production cost per unit. 

The producer’s cost of sales grew slower than revenue, at 9.8% to R18.65 billion.

Aside from managing costs, Astral also focused on rebuilding its balance sheet in the 2025 financial year, which allowed the producer to end the year with over R1 billion in cash.

The company also invested heavily in its operations over the year, with capital expenditure for the financial year up 20.9% to R336 million.

On the back of these excellent results, Astral declared a final dividend of 880 cents per share.