Daybreak collapse leaves nearly 1900 workers jobless

The retrenchment of nearly 1,900 workers at Daybreak Foods has now been finalised, with the company pointing to failed compliance requirements and a rejected relief application, while a labour union condemns the process as a moral failure.

Daybreak Foods confirmed that termination notices were finalised on Friday, 20 March 2026, bringing its retrenchment process to a close. The move follows the adoption of a leaner reactivation approach under the company’s business rescue plan, which leaves only 421 employees still on the payroll.

Company spokesperson Miyelani Shikwamba explained that the job losses became necessary after Daybreak’s application to the Temporary Employer-Employee Relief Scheme (TERS) was turned down.

Financial reporting failures at the centre of the job losses

According to Shikwamba, the rejection traces back to the company’s inability to produce audited financial statements for the 2025 financial year, leaving it without alternative but to proceed with the retrenchment process in order to bring operations in line with the leaner rescue plan.

The picture isn’t entirely bleak, however. Daybreak indicated that reactivating one of its abattoirs remains a future possibility, which could open the door to re-employing several hundred of the affected workers.

The company also confirmed that R150 million already secured from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) for the emergency phase of the rescue process, along with further capital raised since, has been set aside for capital expenditure, restocking the poultry flock and repairing infrastructure, rather than for retrenchment or severance costs. Shikwamba indicated that severance arrangements would instead be addressed in a future version of the business rescue plan.

That uncertainty has left many affected workers anxious about what comes next, with at least one employee, speaking anonymously out of concern for their livelihood, describing a workforce that simply doesn’t know where it stands.

Labour union criticises how the collapse was handled

The Food and Allied Workers Union (Fawu) has been sharply critical of how the situation unfolded. Union spokesperson Dominique Martin said the union was dismayed that the state had been unable to prevent Daybreak’s collapse despite the scale of public money already committed to rescuing it, and argued that management failed to give unions any advance notice of the retrenchments, closing off the chance to explore alternatives before jobs were cut.

Martin contended that pinning the job losses on the rejected TERS application overlooks the company’s own responsibility, pointing to its compliance shortcomings and its failure to consult organised labour as the real drivers behind the retrenchments.

He warned that Daybreak’s decline would ripple outward into already struggling rural communities in the surrounding areas, compounding unemployment that is already high there.

Martin also said the fallout would extend across the wider poultry sector in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, affecting local supply chains, consumption and production, in an industry that is already under pressure from cheap imports and other business closures, and warned that it risks undermining the objectives of the Poultry Master Plan.