Specialist
Former executive at Boparan Holdings Ltd (2 Sisters Food Group)
Agenda
- Cost pressures and supply challenges facing the UK poultry industry, including labour shortage
- Pricing reaction, cost pass-through ability and margin recovery outlook
- Boparan’s strategy – added-value opportunity, asset quality and competitive threats
- Mid-term growth and profitability outlook, including paths to diversification
Questions
1.
Could you highlight 2-3 key trends and themes that you see currently shaping the UK poultry industry?
2.
You mentioned consumer preferences. Compared to 2019, how are current industry volumes trending?
3.
Is the avian flu news affecting demand at all, or are we still seeing higher demand due to the inflationary environment?
4.
Has market capacity been increasing? What’s your outlook in this regard over the next 12 months? Do you expect increases in capacity?
5.
You mentioned the closure of a couple of 2 Sisters Food’s sites, one more recently and another one a few years ago. Do you think the existing footprint has the capacity to substitute for the lost capacity of those two sites?
6.
How severe is the current gas and CO2 crisis and shortage? What impact is that having on the industry and Boparan specifically?
7.
Could you highlight some of the other key cost pressures facing the industry? You mentioned labour is one.
8.
Has labour availability seen any improvement or has it been worsening? What’s your outlook for 2023? Can we expect availability to improve?
9.
How do you assess Boparan’s ability to pass on all the costs to retailers and customers? How difficult is it to negotiate those contracts?
10.
How do you see prices trending over the next 12 months?
11.
Could you give an overview of Boparan’s operations and its standing within the UK poultry market?
12.
You mentioned that the February 2023-announced departure of Boparan’s CEO Ronald Kers puts the company back to five years ago, when he joined. How would you characterise that position? What key issues has his presence helped to mitigate, and what’s the risk of those issues coming back?
13.
You said you think Boparan will be looking to acquire smaller poultry processing sites. How do you assess that strategy, given the need for further automation? How can you invest in automation while acquiring sites smaller than the ones you already have?
14.
What level of investment is required to renovate or perhaps get a site back up to standard?
15.
With the automation investment, what sort of cost saving would that yield, perhaps in percentage terms?
16.
How do you see Boparan’s product portfolio developing over the medium term? Where do the growth drivers lie within the group, perhaps in value-add? Which categories and areas can it leverage growth from?
17.
How do you assess Boparan’s competitive positioning in terms of price, product quality and anything else that comes to mind?
18.
Who do you think poses the biggest competitive threat to Boparan? Could the company be losing share? If so, to whom?
19.
You highlighted two main areas of growth – bird types and value-add. What sort of margin improvement can be extracted from these two areas?
20.
What’s your outlook for M&A in the space? Do you foresee any potential acquisitions?
21.
Would you like to add anything else about Boparan that you think is important?
