The Hindu Business Line : Poultry traders worried about truckers' stir — Feedstock supply, product despatch likely to be hit

Agri-Biz & Commodities - Poultry
Logistics - Roadways

Poultry traders worried about truckers' stir — Feedstock supply, product despatch likely to be hit

G. Gurumurthy

Coimbatore , Aug. 22

THE truck operators' strike has sent worry lines on the Rs 1,000-crore poultry sector, especially in Tamil Nadu, which relies heavily on inter-State road transport for its two-way traffic — to despatch the harvested egg and poultry meat to distant markets and to bring feed ingredients for poultry feed mix preparation in production centres.

On Saturday, the first day of the strike, several poultry production zones in Tamil Nadu reported normal business as normal truck movement was reported. Poultry industry sources said that it would take at least 3-4 days to feel the impact of the transporters' strike, if continued by them, on the movement of the poultry products and feed materials.

Sensing the adverse impact of the strike, the poultry farm owners and feed mill operators in the State are believed to have done some homework ahead. Many of the poultry producers have moved the feedstock last week itself and this would, according to sources, last for the next one week or so. They may feel the pinch only after that.

The worry in the event of a prolonged truckers' strike seems to be greater for broiler producers than the shell egg producing poultry farmers and egg traders. While the latter can stock eggs up to 15 days in normal weather conditions, the chicken producers will have to quickly find a market to sell their produce to escape incurring more expenses on feeding the live/matured birds in their stocks.

If the truckers' strike by any chance gets intensified over the next few days, it may bring distress to both as by then the poultry consumption centres will see a rise in prices for poultry products whereas the production centres in the State would witness crash in price for egg and live birds due to stockpiling of the perishable commodity.

Tamil Nadu layer egg/live chicken producers send at least 40 per cent of their production to Kerala markets. Of the estimated 11.5 million table eggs produced every day and 40 lakh live birds per week from the State poultry, roughly 45 lakh eggs and 15 lakh live birds are sent to Kerala by road.

More than 90 per cent of these dispatches are carried out by the poultry trade using their own trucks and hence the truckers' agitation should not hit them direct but only in the event of the truckers resorting to physically preventing all the road movement.

But, the Tamil Nadu poultry is heavily dependent on feed inputs such as maize, soya or deoiled cakes from other States including upmarkets and this is their main worry now.