Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s chick­en sup­ply chain is com­ing un­der pres­sure from a com­bi­na­tion of heat, dis­rupt­ed in­ter­na­tion­al ship­ping and weak­er sup­plies of im­port­ed hatch­ing eggs, a sit­u­a­tion WGM Group chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer So­raya Mo­hammed says is tem­porar­i­ly af­fect­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of chick­ens na­tion­wide.

Mo­hammed says the pres­sure is be­ing felt at both ends of the pro­duc­tion cy­cle, with ex­treme tem­per­a­tures in the Unit­ed States af­fect­ing the qual­i­ty of hatch­ing eggs im­port­ed in­to Trinidad, while hot weath­er lo­cal­ly is af­fect­ing chick­en growth, mor­tal­i­ty and pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy.

The dis­rup­tion has al­so been com­pound­ed by er­rat­ic sea-freight sched­ules, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to main­tain the nor­mal flow of eggs and chicks through the pro­duc­tion sys­tem.

WGM Group is one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ma­jor in­te­grat­ed poul­try op­er­a­tions, with its busi­ness ex­tend­ing across feed pro­duc­tion, hatch­ery op­er­a­tions, farm­ing and meat pro­cess­ing.

That in­te­gra­tion places the com­pa­ny at the cen­tre of the lo­cal chick­en sup­ply chain—from in­puts en­ter­ing the coun­try to prod­ucts reach­ing su­per­mar­ket shelves.

But Mo­hammed says even an in­te­grat­ed lo­cal op­er­a­tion re­mains ex­posed to in­ter­na­tion­al dis­rup­tions.

She says WGM has con­tin­ued sup­ply­ing su­per­mar­kets, gro­ceries and oth­er re­tail­ers, al­though some cus­tomers have not re­ceived their usu­al quan­ti­ties or mix of chick­en sizes.

The sit­u­a­tion has been made more dif­fi­cult by in­creased de­mand dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od.

Rather than with­draw sup­ply from cus­tomers, Mo­hammed says the com­pa­ny has been ad­just­ing quan­ti­ties and sizes to make the best use of avail­able pro­duc­tion and main­tain dis­tri­b­u­tion across its cus­tomer base.

De­spite the pres­sure, WGM is not fore­cast­ing a price in­crease specif­i­cal­ly be­cause of the cur­rent dis­rup­tion.

Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny is al­ready deal­ing with volatile glob­al in­put and ship­ping costs and con­tin­ues to ab­sorb costs where pos­si­ble while look­ing for ef­fi­cien­cies across its op­er­a­tions.

And while some re­tail­ers may have short­ages, Mo­hammed stress­es that this is not a na­tion­wide dis­ap­pear­ance of chick­en.

She says con­sumers can still find chick­en at oth­er out­lets, with the cur­rent prob­lem cen­tred large­ly on avail­abil­i­ty and the mix of sizes.

The com­pa­ny is now look­ing to­wards the next pro­duc­tion cy­cle for re­lief.

Based on hatch­ery pro­jec­tions, chick pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin im­prov­ing with­in the next two weeks, with WGM an­tic­i­pat­ing a re­turn to nor­mal sup­ply lev­els in ap­prox­i­mate­ly five weeks.

For Mo­hammed, how­ev­er, the cur­rent dis­rup­tion is al­so a warn­ing about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the lo­cal poul­try in­dus­try.