One of South Africa’s most prominent chicken producers, Rainbow Chicken Ltd., has listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s (JSE) Main Board as a primary listing, trading under the share code “RBO”.
Rainbow Chicken, originally founded in 1960 as a small family-owned business, has become one of South Africa’s largest poultry providers in the past six decades.
Today, the company is a fully integrated broiler producer and functions at all stages of chicken production.
The Rainbow Group controls and operates 165 farms, 1,288 houses, eight hatcheries, three primary processing plants, two further processing plants dedicated to added-value chicken products, six animal feed mills, and a 50% shareholding in a joint venture (Matzonox), which operates two waste-to-value plants.
The JSE listing is part of the process of Rainbow being unbundled by its parent company, consumer goods giant, RCL Foods Limited, a decision which was first announced in March this year.
Rainbow CEO Marthinus Stander said the poultry provider’s unbundling will be implemented through a distribution of 890,296,405 ordinary shares, in the ratio of 1 Rainbow Chicken Ltd share for every 1 RCL Foods Limited share held – with shares set to start trading from 1 July.
Rainbow Chicken will be listed under the “Food Products” classification of the Main Board of the JSE, pushing up the number of listed companies to 282 and an overall market capitalisation exceeding R18.8 trillion.
Read: No shortage of chickens in South Africa
