If you have a chicken factory with an average size flock of 29,000 birds, you don't have that option. If you were silly enough to open a really big door, by the time they all got out of the barn, coffee break would be over, and they'd all have to come right back in again. There wouldn't be time to find a bug, let alone eat it.
Almost all of the commercial growers buy their feed from a feed mill, rather than growing and making their own feed. So who do they go to to get chicken feed?
You may have seen some very fancy trucks going here, there, and everywhere in Ontario. I understand they carry a lot of chicken feed.
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| Wallenstein Feed transport truck. Photo courtesy of Doug McKenzie at http://www.hankstruckpictures.com/dm_fergus2004.htm |
Could this be a major factor in the high cost of chicken in Canada? Note the previous posting on the mechanism for passing rising feed costs directly to the chicken consumer.
This one is owned by Wallenstein Feed & Supply. Wallenstein is a family-owned local feed mill, unlike those big nasty trans-national competitors like Cargill, Nutreco, Ridley, and Viterra. Wallenstein claims to be the #1 feed mill in Ontario for chicken feed, with 25% market share.
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| Source: 2013 Alltech Global Feed Report http://www.alltech.com/sites/default/files/2013-feed-tonnage-report.pdf |
According to their annual financial report, Animal Nutrition Canada claims 23% of the overall Canadian feed market share.
Broiler feed is about 0.96 Million MT/yr for Canada. In 2011, Ontario produced 3333.236 Million kg eviscerated chicken, while Canada produced 1,023 Million kg, so Ontario did 32.57% of the Canadian total. Assuming the FCR is the same across Canada, ON broiler feed consumption is 0.3257 * 0.96 * 10^6= 0.3127 million MT of broiler feed for ON. With a Wallenstein market share of 25% in ON, they would have produced about 78,168 MT of broiler feed in 2011.
Rule of Three & Four
A stable competitive market never has more than three significant competitors, the largest of which has no more than four times the market share of the smallest.
This means that market shares of these 3 market leaders tend to be in a ratio of 4:2:1. Generally, all of the other competitors beyond the top 3, will hold between 0% to 10% of the total market share. Based on this heuristic, the following graph shows the resulting market share:
This would predict that the market leader should have a market share of 51.2%, not the 25% that Wallenstein currently claims. Why the difference?
The Rule of Three and Four applies to stable, competitive markets. It generally does not predict when these two pre-conditions do not exist.
There is a huge consolidation going on around the world. Most feed companies are using every dollar of profit, and every dollar they can borrow to buy their competitors. One example is Parrish & Heimbecker (P+H) with head office in Cambridge, with 11 sites across Canada, who has been on a buying spree as well.
I would suggest that the mergers and acquisitions will continue at an ever increasing pace until the 51% is achieved or exceeded. It will only be stopped when Canada's Competition Bureau steps in to stop it from further consolidation until there is just one feed gorilla left who owns all of the market.
Supply Management monopoly attracts the formation of surrounding monopolies, the feed mills being one of them.
I'm taking bets as to whether the winner will be Wallenstein, P+H, Cargill, or a foreign invader. Place your bets.
Will Wallenstein eat its competitors? Will a competitor eat Wallenstein?
It's only a matter of time, as the sharks circle their victims.
This is very educational content and written well for a change. It's nice to see that some people still understand how to write a quality post!
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