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Corporates, poultry giants expand foothold in

EGG MARKET
SUKANTA HALDER
Bangladesh’s egg market used to be largely ruled by thousands of small retailers and wholesalers, but the composition of sellers has been changing for the past several years with the emergence of large corporates and poultry industry giants.
They are gradually expanding the size of their baskets by including the popular protein item, which has raised concerns among small farmers and egg producers. It has also led to analysts calling for major reforms in terms of market management, identifying dominant players and fixing investment ceilings to ensure fair competition.
Take the example of Pran-RFL Group, a leading food and plastic producer in Bangladesh. The company produced 20,000-25,000 eggs per day when it started commercial production in September 2022.
But now it is producing and marketing nearly two lakh eggs daily, said Kamruzzaman Kamal, director of marketing at Pran-RFL Group.
“Due to a rise in health consciousness, urbanisation and improved standards of living, a large market for eggs has been created. That’s why we have entered,” he added.
Similarly, Diamond Egg Ltd, which signed up for layer poultry farming in 2012, now produces about 15 lakh eggs daily, up from three lakh daily at the start of operations, according to its Managing Director Kayser Ahmed.
Alongside Pran-RFL Group and Diamond Egg Ltd, roughly 20 large firms -- including poultry industry major such as Kazi Farms, Paragon Group, and pharma maker Renata’s subsidiary Purnava Ltd -- are selling packaged eggs in a market still dominated by unpackaged eggs.
Curiously, no estimate of egg sales by large companies is available.
Egg sellers said Bangladesh requires nearly four crore eggs per day and that small layer chicken farmers supply most of it.
But the presence of branded eggs is increasing, that too at a premium.
A visit to four supermarkets revealed that branded eggs were selling for at least Tk 25 higher per dozen than unpackaged eggs, which were selling at a maximum of Tk 160 per dozen, according to Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) data.
Kazi Zahin Hasan, director of Kazi Farms Group, said unbranded eggs were mostly produced by small farmers and did not offer any assurances regarding quality.
“Some consumers buy branded eggs because they want a reputable company to assure them of the quality of the product they are buying,” he said, adding that Kazi Farms was increasing investment in the sector in response to rising demand.
Md Sirajul Hoque, director of the animal health division at Renata, said that demand from high-end consumers had led to them producing Omega-3, vitamin E and vitamin B9-enriched eggs.
Hoque said the prices of such eggs were higher than normal eggs due to higher costs of production.
At the other end of the spectrum, Khandaker Md Mohsin, secretary general of the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association, said many egg farmers were forced to shut down shops over the past three-four years due to increasing production costs and an inability to fight off competition.