Our Purpose

To nourish the nation with premium chicken products and supply high-quality animal feed, while operating sustainably and supporting our communities.

Our Vision

To be the leader in the Chicken and Animal Feed industry, renowned for customer and consumer centricity, innovation, and heritage brands.

Our Mission

To establish our Chicken and Animal Feed business by continuously reviewing and adapting to market dynamics, ensuring we deliver exceptional value through innovative products and strong brand heritage. We aim to achieve this by understanding and responding to category, brand, customer, and processing fundamentals with a future-oriented approach.

Our History

In 1960, Stanley Methven founded RAINBOW on his father’s farm. According to legend, while walking on the farm, he saw a rainbow at a waterfall and knew exactly what to call his small business. But he wasn’t picturing a pot of gold; he was picturing pots of hot Isishebo feeding families!

Stanley started selling RAINBOW’s chicken from a stall in central Durban, and demand quickly grew, leading to the establishment of the first processing plant in Hammarsdale in 1963.

RAINBOW’s goal has always been to feed families, care for communities, and nourish the nation. We are still keeping Stanley’s promise today, more than 60 years later as one of South Africa’s largest poultry producers.

Continued Innovation

Demand for Stanley’s chicken grew rapidly, and Rainbow expanded enormously, opening three processing plants within 16 years. A major highlight was winning the KFC tender in 1984.

Continued innovation saw a new R20M feed plant commissioned in 1992 and a R159M value-added plant in 2006. We were able to weather the challenges of the chicken dumping crisis, bird flu, listeriosis and covid 19 – and now we are ready for a new chapter.

Our obsession with the quality of our birds continues! Our aim is to maintain the highest level of food safety at every one of our farms and product sites, whilst treating our chickens with absolute care. 

Today, Rainbow is a fully integrated broiler producer that breeds and rears livestock on Epol Feed. We process, distribute, and market fresh, frozen, value-added, and further-processed chicken of superior quality.