Company encourages more chicken consumption

MAINLAND Holdings, a locally-owned agribusiness company based in Lae, says there is room for increasing chicken consumption in the country.
The company’s managing director David Alcock said this yesterday when making a comparison of the volume of chicken consumed in both New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.
Alcock said chicken is a healthy form of protein and can be produced and sold at an affordable price.
“We want to get more people to eat chicken because it’s a healthy protein,” he said.
“We want to see the growth of the category,” he said.
“For the category to grow, we’ve got to change people’s behaviour and encourage them to eat more chicken.
“The way to do that is to reduce costs.
“The consumption of chicken in New Zealand is 42 kilograms per person per year.
“In PNG, it’s just five kilograms.
“So there are nine to 10 times growth opportunities here.
“We are trying to increase the consumption of chicken through affordability.
“We are trying to make people consume chicken at least four times a week.”
Alcock said the main cost involved in producing chicken is in stockfeed.
He said they have trialled the farming of Shogum and it has proved successful so the plant can be used to produce bulk stockfeed locally.
He said Soya beans are another crop that can be grown in the country and which they are looking forward to trialling as well.
Alcock said the good news for the country is that it can now grow its own stockfeed so that will reduce chicken production costs thus resulting in the protein being sold at a lower price at shops around the country.