RCL Foods, which is controlled by Johann Rupert’s Remgro, has taken its first specific steps to unbundle its Rainbow Chicken division, flagging a plan to list it separately, reports Fin24.

While CEO Paul Cruickshank was not able to give a specific timeline yet for a proposed separation and listing of Rainbow, he said in an interview after the release of results for the six months to end December 2023 that it would be sooner rather than later.

‘We are not talking years here, we are talking months.’ Cruickshank yesterday said the company had flagged its intentions in 2021 to separate Rainbow from RCL Foods as it had done with its Vector Logistics business.

He said the listing plan, as unveiled in the results announcement yesterday, was the company being more specific about what that separation would look like.

‘That destination is now an unbundling to shareholders in a listed environment.’

A listing of Rainbow will, in effect, bring RCL, which also owns brands such as Yum Yum peanut butter and Selati Sugar, full circle.

Previously, the Rainbow business was the original listing on the JSE in the late 1980s and early 1990s before it evolved into RCL Foods with the acquisition of Vector Logistics, Foodcorp and TSB Sugar, said Cruickshank.

Cruickshank said RCL would also have to undertake various steps before it finalised this separation, including regulatory steps, as well as deciding what the capital structures of both the RCL Foods and Rainbow businesses would look like.

At the same time, Rainbow, which he said was continuing on its turnaround path, would need ‘facilities’ to stand on its own.

The group said in its results announcement that following a strategic review of the RCL business, the board gave its preliminary approval on Friday for the group to pursue the formal separation of Rainbow ‘via an unbundling to shareholders and a concurrent listing on the JSE’.

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