The Atlantic Group
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The hand that feeds...
The Atlantic Group is a standout provider of bulk-buying high and low grade meat to everyone from the individuals amongst the African market to hotels, restaurants, schools and beyond. With an unfaltering people-centric focus and a business acumen founded on following the moral and greater good, not underhanded tactics or greed, it offers more than a little light of hope to this, one of Africa’s most exciting industries today.
However, this strength and philosophy of taking heart and helping stems from a turbulent past, which following the founding of the company in 1995, saw this family-fuelled group endure tragedy, tough business pressures from the more dishonest circling in, and in turn has shaped quite how strong the company is today.
Building the Group
When we caught up with Roger Warr, Managing Director, he explained a little more about how he came to the role. His father, Patrick, founded the company in 1995. He and his wife bought out his previous partner in 2000, before she was tragically killed four years later. It was around this time that Warr stepped in to keep the company going in the family.
“I was busy studying third year at Varsity. He [Patrick] wanted to put the company on the market because he started losing a bit of his will and I decided to buy it,” Warr explains.
Warr appointed a fresh new management team with the help of his cousin who came from the banking industry in the United Kingdom to take part, and was guided wisely in the turn-around strategy by his business mentor, Bill Rawson.
“We’re quite a young management team, the average age is about 26-27 and now the structure of the company is myself, then seven managers that manage the Group,” Warr says.
“In terms of structure, there’s Atlantic Meat, which largely supplies to the township areas in the Western Cape right up to the Transkei, then Anchor Meats, which supplies to hotels and restaurants in the Western Cape and butcheries, schools, hostels and shipping companies.”
Warr says that there is also another factory outlet called Nyama Nyama which means ‘meat meat’ in the Xhosa language, and that’s a retail outlet in the third biggest multi-transport centre in the Western Cape. Overall, the group is home to around 200 workers and pushes out between 400-600 tonnes of meat per month. These three business avenues offer a splendid mix of different sorts of supply for different sorts of clients whilst complimenting each other in the process.
The Atlantic Meats advantages
In order to understand the different ways that the three business components of the Atlantic Group work in unison, the place to start is its founding avenue, aptly-named Atlantic Meat.
“In Atlantic, our predominant strength is selling into the townships,” Warr says.
“We have networks into the townships with our business partners which sell within the townships, then we also sell directly to walk-in customers as well and then also up to the Trankei.”
This business predominantly serves the native African consumer, and Warr also says that it has been an enjoyable endeavour in and out of the global financial crisis. Its demographic tends to have little credit which provided a strong buffer zone when the recession hit, and, as Warr says, just as people need bread, people need meat, offering strong and continuous product demand despite the recent downturn.
“Anchor Meat is our Halal section in the company and we’re currently building a new 1,500 square-metre facility for that,” he continues.
“Currently, it’s been Anchor and Atlantic under one roof but it’s growing to the point where we could end up being on top of each other, hence building another facility.”
This new facility is planned for completion in early September this year which further demonstrates the efficient and growth-fuelled development going on within the company today.
“Anchor supplies to other small business to business market, so schools, hotels, restaurants, shipping companies and also supplying to other butcheries,” Warr says.
Butcheries are a relatively new customer, with supply taking place during the last couple of months, and its restaurant supplying has been ongoing since the company was founded. In this, it is clear that the company is able to draw on past experience, contacts and reputation to add to its repertoire.
“Nyama Nyama we took over about two weeks ago on May 17, so that’s quite fresh,” Warr adds, explaining that this component is being run between himself and a friend.
“With the other factory that we built we began in June 2009, and with Nyama we started on May 17, 2010.”
Despite the varied activities going on, there are a few key strengths which apply across the board for the group, which Warr says begins with its very strong bulk buying ability and diverse customer reach. He says that when an abattoir buys a load of cattle, known as a ‘lot,’ it arrives in all different sorts of meat grade and type. It is preferable for the farmer to sell this on in one go, rather than having to orchestrate multiple small-scale trucking, which is exactly where the Atlantic Meats Group has the edge.
“That’s an advantage we give them because we do upmarket meats for hotels and restaurants and we do low-graded meat to the African market. We have great relationships with our suppliers who are willing to supply a whole range of the product,” Warr says.
“That allows us to buy at a cheaper rate which obviously we can pass on to our customers.”
Add to this the company’s maximum three-day turnaround between meat entering its factory and reaching a customer, and it become evident that Atlantic meats runs a quick and economical ship with the freshest of product.
“In general we’ve experienced about 15 per cent growth since the recession period, so from 2008-2009 and from 2009-2010 we’ve experienced 12 per cent growth in sales year-on-year,” Warr says.
However, it’s not just the wholly profit-centric aspects of this company that allow it to stand out in the industry.
The heart of the company
In order to illustrate the company philosophy, Warr notes that Atlantic Meats is a very strongly-orientated Christian company.
“All of the managers lead what are called Home Groups in churches, like mentoring programs. We have a strong emphasis on our leadership team having very caring hearts,” Warr says.
“We’ve got seven managers and about 14 supervisors with the other people underneath them. Each week we do biblical leadership with them which teaches them about leadership in the business world. Normally people will refer to Nelson Mandela or Winston Churchill as a leader, where we use a biblical example.”
Put simply, Warr says that Atlantic Meats’ common number one goal “is building a platform to speak truth into the lives of our employees.”
“I think that largely a lot of the guys in the townships have grown up in environments where they haven’t been taken care of, where dishonesty is acceptable, where group stealing is like a game, where women aren’t honoured as they should be,” he says.
“We find our opportunities in the gaps to speak truth into their lives and get them into the right way of thinking.”
Whether this is Warr’s efforts to add a eighth manager to the company in the form of a full-time social worker, or the company’s, “one meat meal per day” scheme which allows those in need to purchase bulk amounts of meat at the lowest possible price, each of these activities reflects a wider care for workers, business partners and the average person in need.
“It works for our company. Because we buy in bulk we can feed in bulk,” Warr says.
Whilst admitting that it isn’t always easy to follow the moral high ground in everyday business, Warr says that speaking truth and guiding its valued company employees is “our real heart of why we do what we do, but at the same time we’re working to do good business.”
The growth the Atlantic Group has experienced in the past few years speaks for itself, and Warr’s words about just how pivotal each and every worker is in this equation are refreshing and exemplary. The company is fiercely committed to its partners, workers and goals alike, and it is plain to see that what has begun to take shape and pay dividends will likely continue to do so for many years to come.
The Atlantic Group is a standout provider of bulk-buying high and low grade meat to everyone from the individuals amongst the African market to hotels, restaurants, schools and beyond. With an unfaltering people-centric focus and a business acumen founded on following the moral and greater good, not underhanded tactics or greed, it offers more than a little light of hope to this, one of Africa’s most exciting industries today.
However, this strength and philosophy of taking heart and helping stems from a turbulent past, which following the founding of the company in 1995, saw this family-fuelled group endure tragedy, tough business pressures from the more dishonest circling in, and in turn has shaped quite how strong the company is today.
Building the Group
When we caught up with Roger Warr, Managing Director, he explained a little more about how he came to the role. His father, Patrick, founded the company in 1995. He and his wife bought out his previous partner in 2000, before she was tragically killed four years later. It was around this time that Warr stepped in to keep the company going in the family.
“I was busy studying third year at Varsity. He [Patrick] wanted to put the company on the market because he started losing a bit of his will and I decided to buy it,” Warr explains.
Warr appointed a fresh new management team with the help of his cousin who came from the banking industry in the United Kingdom to take part, and was guided wisely in the turn-around strategy by his business mentor, Bill Rawson.
“We’re quite a young management team, the average age is about 26-27 and now the structure of the company is myself, then seven managers that manage the Group,” Warr says.
“In terms of structure, there’s Atlantic Meat, which largely supplies to the township areas in the Western Cape right up to the Transkei, then Anchor Meats, which supplies to hotels and restaurants in the Western Cape and butcheries, schools, hostels and shipping companies.”
Warr says that there is also another factory outlet called Nyama Nyama which means ‘meat meat’ in the Xhosa language, and that’s a retail outlet in the third biggest multi-transport centre in the Western Cape. Overall, the group is home to around 200 workers and pushes out between 400-600 tonnes of meat per month. These three business avenues offer a splendid mix of different sorts of supply for different sorts of clients whilst complimenting each other in the process.
The Atlantic Meats advantages
In order to understand the different ways that the three business components of the Atlantic Group work in unison, the place to start is its founding avenue, aptly-named Atlantic Meat.
“In Atlantic, our predominant strength is selling into the townships,” Warr says.
“We have networks into the townships with our business partners which sell within the townships, then we also sell directly to walk-in customers as well and then also up to the Trankei.”
This business predominantly serves the native African consumer, and Warr also says that it has been an enjoyable endeavour in and out of the global financial crisis. Its demographic tends to have little credit which provided a strong buffer zone when the recession hit, and, as Warr says, just as people need bread, people need meat, offering strong and continuous product demand despite the recent downturn.
“Anchor Meat is our Halal section in the company and we’re currently building a new 1,500 square-metre facility for that,” he continues.
“Currently, it’s been Anchor and Atlantic under one roof but it’s growing to the point where we could end up being on top of each other, hence building another facility.”
This new facility is planned for completion in early September this year which further demonstrates the efficient and growth-fuelled development going on within the company today.
“Anchor supplies to other small business to business market, so schools, hotels, restaurants, shipping companies and also supplying to other butcheries,” Warr says.
Butcheries are a relatively new customer, with supply taking place during the last couple of months, and its restaurant supplying has been ongoing since the company was founded. In this, it is clear that the company is able to draw on past experience, contacts and reputation to add to its repertoire.
“Nyama Nyama we took over about two weeks ago on May 17, so that’s quite fresh,” Warr adds, explaining that this component is being run between himself and a friend.
“With the other factory that we built we began in June 2009, and with Nyama we started on May 17, 2010.”
Despite the varied activities going on, there are a few key strengths which apply across the board for the group, which Warr says begins with its very strong bulk buying ability and diverse customer reach. He says that when an abattoir buys a load of cattle, known as a ‘lot,’ it arrives in all different sorts of meat grade and type. It is preferable for the farmer to sell this on in one go, rather than having to orchestrate multiple small-scale trucking, which is exactly where the Atlantic Meats Group has the edge.
“That’s an advantage we give them because we do upmarket meats for hotels and restaurants and we do low-graded meat to the African market. We have great relationships with our suppliers who are willing to supply a whole range of the product,” Warr says.
“That allows us to buy at a cheaper rate which obviously we can pass on to our customers.”
Add to this the company’s maximum three-day turnaround between meat entering its factory and reaching a customer, and it become evident that Atlantic meats runs a quick and economical ship with the freshest of product.
“In general we’ve experienced about 15 per cent growth since the recession period, so from 2008-2009 and from 2009-2010 we’ve experienced 12 per cent growth in sales year-on-year,” Warr says.
However, it’s not just the wholly profit-centric aspects of this company that allow it to stand out in the industry.
The heart of the company
In order to illustrate the company philosophy, Warr notes that Atlantic Meats is a very strongly-orientated Christian company.
“All of the managers lead what are called Home Groups in churches, like mentoring programs. We have a strong emphasis on our leadership team having very caring hearts,” Warr says.
“We’ve got seven managers and about 14 supervisors with the other people underneath them. Each week we do biblical leadership with them which teaches them about leadership in the business world. Normally people will refer to Nelson Mandela or Winston Churchill as a leader, where we use a biblical example.”
Put simply, Warr says that Atlantic Meats’ common number one goal “is building a platform to speak truth into the lives of our employees.”
“I think that largely a lot of the guys in the townships have grown up in environments where they haven’t been taken care of, where dishonesty is acceptable, where group stealing is like a game, where women aren’t honoured as they should be,” he says.
“We find our opportunities in the gaps to speak truth into their lives and get them into the right way of thinking.”
Whether this is Warr’s efforts to add a eighth manager to the company in the form of a full-time social worker, or the company’s, “one meat meal per day” scheme which allows those in need to purchase bulk amounts of meat at the lowest possible price, each of these activities reflects a wider care for workers, business partners and the average person in need.
“It works for our company. Because we buy in bulk we can feed in bulk,” Warr says.
Whilst admitting that it isn’t always easy to follow the moral high ground in everyday business, Warr says that speaking truth and guiding its valued company employees is “our real heart of why we do what we do, but at the same time we’re working to do good business.”
The growth the Atlantic Group has experienced in the past few years speaks for itself, and Warr’s words about just how pivotal each and every worker is in this equation are refreshing and exemplary. The company is fiercely committed to its partners, workers and goals alike, and it is plain to see that what has begun to take shape and pay dividends will likely continue to do so for many years to come.
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