Expect to pay more for eggs

NEWS that the price of eggs will increase won’t go over easy with those who enjoy a hearty breakfast.

The South African Poultry Association (Sapa) said yesterday that a 7% to 8% price increase was on the cards.

However, Charlotte Nkuna, senior executive at Sapa, said the hike would be temporary. It comes after a year of price increases for milk and other food staples.

Cape Town breakfast restaurateurs said customers might have to pay more for both their Styrofoam cartons and their Sunday morning omelettes.

“We try to take as much of a hit as we can, but with the elevated price of dairy a price increase will have to happen”, said Daniel Heyns, the manager of Lola’s, a café on Long Street.

The egg- price increase is the result of a different drought-affected crop, maize, rising in price over a year ago, according Nkuna. Maize is the main component in chicken feed and between January and August last year, feed prices rose a minimum of R1 000.

To adapt, Nkuna said, many large farms “depleted” their stocks earlier to avoid the cost of feeding them, removing chickens which were 70 or 71 weeks old from the farm instead of after 75 to 80 days. Some small farms simply closed.

“It slows down our development work because it’s small farmers who didn’t have resources to stomach the price drop,” Nkuna said.

Heyns said when prices rose, they would change recipes before changing prices, for instance replacing the avocado in a salmon-cheddar omelette with rocket.

The general manager at Hemelhuijs on Waterkant Street said they were unsure how they would respond to the latest hikes but had raised prices twice amid a total of four egg price increases over the last three to four years.