PR - Requirements For Feedlot Site Selection

A large variety of feedlots can be found throughout the country (SA), but locations differ for various reasons. According to the theory, the location decision for a start-up venture is a timeconsuming exercise and the following seven factors or conditions need to be part of the consideration (Wickham, 2004): The business environment conditions, availability of resources like water, power and other municipal services, site availability and cost of the services, government (local, provincial and national) regulations and other legislation, availability of markets, and personal preferences in terms of what the role players want, can also influence such decision. Because each of the mentioned factors can comprise many smaller components, and assuming that there is no specific indication methods to be used to compare different localities with each other to make the best location decision, the authors had to find a scientific way to incorporate all the abovementioned as well as other practical aspects and still consider apples with apples to find the optimum location. The specific study area for this research is the former homeland of Transkei which forms part of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The region consists of four different municipality boundaries and in order to set up a decision matrix for each region, data were used from secondary data sources. To compare the different locations with each other a SWOT analysis was done by using weights describing the importance of each element and a score to rate each element. This was done to quantify the results from the SWOT analysis. The analysis was divided into two parts, namely to identify the Strengths and Weaknesses and the Opportunities and Threats. Every factor in the analysis was judged based on the information obtained from the situational analysis. After identifying the most suitable macro area, more or less the same method was used to determine the micro environment, except that the various stakeholders of the feedlot took part in this process. The methodology used in the workshop to develop the strategies, is based on the balance scorecard theory namely Logical Framework Analysis. Objectives and action plans were developed in order to do effective planning of the establishment of the feedlot in a specific micro area.

Keywords: site selection, feedlot