Sustainability within Irvine's
Irvine’s is Zimbabwe’s leading poultry producer and is the largest producer of broiler day old chicks in the country.
A chicken processing plant and an egg processing plant as well as feed mill are all located at Derbyshire Farm. Irvine’s is one of Zimbabwe’s largest table egg producers.
Awards
During the year, the following accolades were received by Irvine’s:
Key Sustainability Highlights
- Command Livestock Agricultural Programme
Irvine’s has partnered with the Command Livestock Agricultural Programme since 2017 where it freely provides 12 equipped poultry demonstration houses across the country, each with a capacity of 2 500 broilers. Project beneficiaries used the first batch of chickens and feed set up to invest in the next batches. The project contributed towards the empowerment of poultry farmers in Zimbabwe. - Small Scale Poultry Farmers
Irvine’s provided free training in rural areas on best poultry farming methods resulting in these farmers achieving a 95% success rate, which equates to a commercial grower in the region. In F2024 Irvine’s offered free technical support to small scale growers in order to help them increase their profit yields. Regional Technical Sales Representatives were deployed to fully cover the whole country. Over 2 000 small scale poultry farmers attended training sessions held across customer points. Irvine’s prides itself in contributing towards the local empowerment of poultry farmers in Zimbabwe. - Contract Grower Programme
As part of its contract grower programme, Irvine’s has 31 independent farmers who supply its processing plant with birds for slaughter. Of the broiler chickens processed at Irvine’s Zimbabwe, 100% are grown by contract farmers. - Animal Welfare
Irvine’s gives animal welfare high priority by following best practice standards. All team members in the departments that handle or deal with live animals are trained using Irvine’s comprehensive animal welfare manual to ensure that animals are handled correctly at all times. - Disease Prevention
Irvine’s being the biggest and only fully integrated poultry company in the country, has in place robust biosecurity measures meant to protect the country from disease outbreaks.- To assist in reducing the devastating Newcastle Disease, which can be problematic in small scale flocks, Irvine’s, in conjunction with the Department of Veterinary Services, conducted annual vaccinations of small scales farmers’ birds around Irvine’s Derbyshire and Lanark farms, all 8 contract breeder farms and all 31 contract broiler grower farms. A total of 95 395 small scale farmers’ birds were vaccinated in F2024.
- Water recycling project
Phase 1 of Irvine’s ongoing water recycling project to mitigate against drought and also reduce the amount of water used is now complete. This involves procurement and installation of coarse and fine screens to filter water. Recycled water is now being used to clean crates with 80m3 of water a day being recycled and used for cleaning crates.
Note:
- For the historical data to be comparable, the Scope 1 Carbon Footprint for 2022 to 2023 has been recalculated using the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (UK) (DEFRA) factors for 2024.
