Food manufacturer Premier Group is making inroads in expanding the Goldkey brand outside KwaZulu-Natal after having established a presence in the Western Cape.
The owner of iconic South African brands including Blue Ribbon, Snowflake, BB Bakeries and Iwisa, Premier bought a 30% stake in family-owned rice distributor Goldkeys International, whose brands include Golden Delight and Golden Pride, with the aim of helping the company grow its footprint nationally.
Premier CEO Kobus Gertenbach said: “We’ve increased our listings in the Western Cape. We have listed the product in most of the inland market, and we’ve actually picked up some nice volume. So we certainly are well on our way. I think it’s going to take us a couple of years to fully establish the brand in the inland market. It’s not a brand name that is well known to consumers.”
Golden Delight, which is the main Thai rice brand, “doesn’t have nearly the same brand recognition as some of the other large competitor brands have”, Gertenbach said. “And so I think it’s a journey for us. it’s a long haul, but we’ve put all the building blocks in place, and we’ve started to gain traction. So I’m quite confident that we’ll be able to build it out into a good business countrywide.”
Future plans for ZEN Commodities are to expand its customer base, as well as the range of commodities it supplies. Subsequent to the Goldkeys and ZEN Commodities acquisitions, Premier’s service and product offering is more closely aligned with customer needs.
— Premier Group
Gertenbach said investments are being made in product quality, brand building, consumer awareness and ensuring availability of the Goldkeys range in the retail and wholesale channels, and this has resulted in some increased employment opportunities.
He said rice is a key staple in consumers’ baskets and global prices are coming down from a high a year ago caused by India’s ban on exports.
Consumers were paying R200 for a 10kg bag of rice a few months ago, and “that situation has now reversed and we are sitting at a R140 retail price. So there has been quite a lot of relief for consumers since the end of last year.”
In expanding its exposure to rice, Premier acquired a minority stake in ZEN Commodities, a Dubai-based soft commodities trading business that procures rice from Thailand and elsewhere for supply to rice packers in Southern Africa.
“Future plans for ZEN Commodities are to expand its customer base, as well as the range of commodities it supplies. Subsequent to the Goldkeys and ZEN Commodities acquisitions, Premier’s service and product offering is more closely aligned with customer needs,” Premier said.
Gertenbach said Premier’s Mozambique and Eswatini businesses buy rice through ZEN and “as a result they have managed to reduce the input costs. The opportunity lies in trading rice into the rest of the African market and share in the growth in the continent.”
Premier, which this week reported operating profit up 17% to R1.9bn for the year to March, expects moderate revenue growth in the 2026 financial year, driven by lower maize input costs and subdued global wheat prices. Revenue for the 2025 financial year was up 7% to R19.9bn.
Gertenbach expects maize prices to soften by mid-2025, which will enable it to pass through cost savings to burdened consumers. He said maize “got so expensive as a result of the drought last year in Southern Africa, and consumers started to pull back on how much maize meal they were buying and were substituting other options like bread, pasta and a little bit of cake flour, which remained fairly stable in terms of pricing”.
He said the maize industry has overcapacity and margins are severely under pressure. “The category has got an enormous amount of millers in the industry that are all unprofitable.”
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