Bairaha Farms Plc approaching 40 years

Bairaha Farms Plc., was established in 1975 by setting up its first large scale commercial poultry farms in Katana in the Gampaha district. In subsequent years this was followed by establishment of large scale and modern parent broiler breeder farms,hatchery, broiler farms, out-grower farms and state of the art chicken processing factory.In fact Bairaha Farms Plc. was the pioneer in processing and supplying packeted,frozen quality broiler chicken to the Sri Lankan market.

There are number of factors to justify the claim that Bairaha Farms Plc (BFP) is truly a national, Sri Lankan company. First and the foremost, it is the only public listed company in the Stock Market in Sri Lanka, which is owned more than 98% by the Sri Lankan people and institutions numbering 3,308. Hence, earnings and dividends are retained within Sri Lanka for investments and/or for consumtion purposes thereby spurring further economic and social developments within the country. There being 3,308 shareholders in the company further demonstrates its national status. Besides the founder shareholders, Employees’ Provident Fund has a 9.6% stake in BFP, Empolyees’ Trust Fund Board owns nearly 7.7% of BFP and Perpetual Capital (Pvt.) Ltd. together with Perpetual Asset Management (Pvt.) Ltd. (which are owned by family of Aloysius) has a 6.01% stake in BEP as at 31st July 2014. Ownership of substantial stake in BFP by both Employees’ Provident Fund and Employees’ Trust Fund Board clearly demonstrates true national status in terms of ownership of Bairaha Farms Plc. Further, Bairaha Farms Plc was also one of the private companies to issue 5% of the shares through a Trust to all of its employees just before going for a public share issue (IPO) in 1994.

In the case of a number of other poultry companies, major production and operations activities tend to be located in the same area or district from where the founder/owner comes from but in the case of BFP except for a small sales outlet, all the farms and factories are located in six other districts and not in the district where the founder of the company was born.

Today, Bairah Farms Plc’s activities are based in a number of districts empoying nearly 800 persons,out-growers, sub-contractors, transporters, distributors and many others.There are spin-off effects on other sectors specially in the agricultural sectors, benefiting directly farmers engaged in maize cultivation and ricemillers providing rice by-product to the poultry industry. Maize farmers are nearly 90% dependant on the poultry industry. The next step in Bairaha Farms Plc’s journey is to take company forward with export of chicken to middle eastern countries therby helping to create employment opportunities in the rural areas encompassing a number of the sectors of the economy.