South African poultry imports rose through the first seven months of 2026. But the increase looks larger than it is because of a distorted comparison year, according to Poultry Bulletin data reported by African Farming on 2 November 2026. A nine-week ban on Brazilian poultry in 2025 had depressed import volumes that year, making 2026’s recovery appear steeper on a month-on-month basis.
June 2026 imports were up 125% year on year, and July was up 188%, the data show. Every month since September 2025 has exceeded the equivalent month a year earlier. The South African Poultry Association, the source for the figures, cautions that these jumps reflect the low 2025 base as much as any genuine growth in demand.
What is actually moving
Total import volumes for the first seven months of 2026 are closer to 2024 levels, when shipments exceeded 400,000 tonnes valued at R5.4bn. That remains well below the 2018 peak of 566,000 tonnes, worth R6.5bn at the time. Mechanically deboned meat still makes up 60% to 70% of imports, by far the largest single category of the lot.
Chicken offal, including feet, heads and livers, hit a record 103,000 tonnes in 2025. That is up from 95,000 tonnes in 2024 and just 43,000 tonnes in 2017, a near-tripling over eight years. Bone-in portions such as leg quarters were nearly 70% above 2025 levels by July, though they remain a smaller share of total volume than offal or deboned meat.
Europe re-enters the market
Bird-flu outbreaks across Europe eased during the Northern Hemisphere summer. That allowed three European countries to resume poultry exports to South Africa in July, with four more awaiting approval once their own outbreaks are declared over. The return of European supply is likely to keep import volumes high even as the year-on-year comparisons normalise, once 2026 data is measured against a full, unrestricted 2025 rather than a ban-shortened one.
The pattern sits at the opposite end of Africa’s poultry spectrum from the Republic of Congo, which covers barely 0.4% of its own chicken demand and has just secured a $60m World Bank package to expand local feed and breeding capacity. South Africa, by contrast, has a mature domestic industry that still leans on imports for the cheapest cuts, particularly offal and mechanically deboned meat destined for processed food and lower-income retail outlets.
Local producers have previously raised concerns that cheap imported cuts undercut domestic chicken on price, even when South African output itself is healthy. The latest figures suggest that dynamic persists. Rising import volumes have not obviously displaced local production, but they do show how exposed the market remains to decisions made far from South African poultry farms, from Brazilian trade bans to European animal-health rules that neither producers nor regulators here can control.
Industry analysts tracking the data say August 2026 figures, not yet published, will be the clearer test of whether import growth continues once last year’s ban-related distortion drops out of the year-on-year comparison entirely.
South Africa’s poultry sector employs tens of thousands of people directly across hatcheries, feed mills and processing plants, which is why import swings of this size draw close attention from both producer groups and government trade officials. The association’s own data releases have become a regular reference point for policymakers weighing whether to adjust tariffs on specific cuts, rather than relying on anecdotal reports from individual producers.
