Joint venture forms Burmese chicken company

By Oscar Rousseau

- Last updated on GMT

Bel Ga Myanmar will need 80 staff to handle its remit of producing 12m chicks per year
Bel Ga Myanmar will need 80 staff to handle its remit of producing 12m chicks per year

Related tags Myanmar Poultry Processing equipment & plant design

A chicken hatchery tasked to produce 12 million birds has been created in Burma by a joint venture of animal feed and poultry breeding companies from the Netherlands and Belgium. 

Bel Ga Myanmar is the newly-listed company in Myanmar, also known as Burma, established in September 2016. The new business will now build and operate a chicken hatchery capable of housing close to 100,000 hens, producing 12m day-old chicks per year.

It is expected to generate 80 direct jobs and a number of indirect roles across Myanmar once the site is operational in May 2017.

Bel Ga Myanmar will be controlled by BDH Azier BV, a split joint venture between poultry breeding firm Belgabroed from Belgium, and giant Netherlands-based animal feed firm De Heus.

Capital investment

Setting up the Myanmar hatchery is estimated to cost at least $10.5m. This will be financed through a combination of equity and long-term debt. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private sector investment arm of the World Bank – has proposed a $6.5m loan to support the project.

The site is still a long way from completion as sponsors are yet to find an area of land required for the project in a zone close to Myanmar’s capital, Yangon. The total land requirement is around 120,000 square metres.

Once complete, the hatchery will produce day-old chicks for local farmers and help address what the IFC said was the “rapidly growing demand for poultry products in the country​”.

The bank has warned the investment will have local impacts if not managed correctly. Bel Ga Myanmar will have to demonstrate it is following due diligence on workplace conditions, pollution, health and safety, and resource efficiency. The IFC said it would periodically review the project’s ongoing compliance to the above standards to ensure it did not breach the requirements of receiving long-term capital.

Dutch company De Heus already has a footprint in Asia after launching poultry firm Bel Ga Vietnam in 2013. The business operates two breeding farms and a hatchery in south-central Vietnam.

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