Chain organization and value creation in poultry meat and eggs industries

The capability of firms to compete on markets is linked more and more to the development of integration relationships between firms operating at different stages of the production chain. Thus the value created by an integrated production system arises both from the efficiency of single firms and the development of cooperative relationships. In the poultry meat production chain this kind of relationship is rather frequent and it could be a worthwhile task to assess the total value created by this chain and the value distribution among firms. This paper firstly describes the economical profile of the poultry meat production chain, considering the organizational and technological relationships between enterprises. Then, accounting data of about fifty firms has been processed to evaluate the total returns that is derived from internal activities developed along the chain and its distribution. First results regard the assessment of the high level of costs related to the acquisition of production inputs. Consequently, the profitability of the poultry meat production chain seems to be highly dependent on external factors, such as little changes in prices of products and production factors (mainly feed).