RCL is playing the latest pet food recall off as a small stock loss, but it has big stakes. (Photo: iStock) The first mistake this journalist made was expecting dogfood to be tracked by batch number. In the market, expiry date is the currency of forensic tracing.
It’s also a key point behind the breach that turned out to be a case study in reverse logistics gone rogue. In November 2025, routine quality control processes detected traces of salmonella in certain dry pet food products.
The affected batches were condemned and dispatched to a specialist waste management facility in Eastern Gauteng for destruction. Instead, criminals stole the condemned stock (or it leaked through other means, but let’s give the official version the benefit of the doubt) and began offloading it on the informal market – including Facebook Marketplace.
That would have been bad enough, but when RCL Foods conducted further internal checks on Thursday, 5 March, it made a discovery far more damaging than marketplace theft: condemned product had also entered formal retail channels.
Biscuit, fetch the story
The company’s own supply chain (you know, the one governed by food safety protocols and quality gates) had inadvertently become a vector for salmonella-tainted goods.
Preliminary internal assessments indicate that some product, that was condemned and marked for destruction, was erroneously released to the formal trade. (RCL Foods, March 2026)
The subsequent nationwide recall directive covers 115,045 bags across seven brands: Bobtail, Bonzo, Canine Cuisine, Catmor, Feline Cuisine, Optimizor and Ultra Pet.
“We did not meet our own standards. This is not what our customers expect from RCL FOODS. We are taking every step necessary to rectify the situation.” Paul Cruickshank, CEO, RCL Foods
When Daily Maverick pressed the company on the financial magnitude of the crisis and recent share price wobbles, RCL Foods offered a cautious and carefully constructed assessment.
On the recall’s direct financial hit, the company acknowledged the obvious limitations of mid-crisis accounting:
“At this point we are not yet able to fully quantify the effect of the recall on our results as we are in the middle of the recall process. Affected stock represents about 1% of our annual pet food production.”
On the share price slide, which unsettled investors in the days following the recall announcement, RCL pointed the finger firmly elsewhere:
“The share price movement last week was largely attributed to the interim results we released on 3 March, where we reported a 24.6% reduction in Ebitda, largely due to significant headwinds in our sugar business as a result of inadequate tariff protection.”
To the balance sheet
That deflection is technically accurate. But it also steps over why the recall is so financially devastating in the context of the interim results: pet food was not supposed to be another problem.
If you look at the full picture of RCL’s profitability, the groceries segment – where pet food is the single-biggest main player – was functioning as a financial buffer for a struggling corporate empire.
Consider the FY2025 audited results for the year ending June 2025. While sugar, RCL’s biggest revenue line recorded a 24.3% gross profit decline, groceries delivered a 19.1% surge.
Groceries generated R5.41-billion in revenue, which is roughly 20.4% of the group’s total top line. And RCL manufactured that margin without volume growth.
Total pet food market volumes actually declined 4.9% in the 2025 financial year. The division grew profits through premiumisation – the new retail strategy darling that pushes high-tier brands, panders to specialised diets and pampers boutique veterinary channels.
Other gains were realised through eliminating load shedding costs and driving continuous improvement efficiencies. When the market shrinks and your margins expand, you are doing something right.
But that’s only half the story
That momentum carried directly into the first six months of the 2026 financial year, ending December 2025 (the aforementioned interim results).
The broader RCL group was taking a beating. Total revenue dropped 1.9% to R13.3-billion, dragged down by a 5.9% sugar shrinkage. But again groceries was the sole engine of growth.
Revenue expanded 3.3% to R2.89-billion, and pet food volumes reversed course, growing 2.2% where the previous year had shrunk.
Management was confident enough in this trajectory to pump R22.3-million in capital expenditure into the segment during those six months.
The Randfontein facility, a state-of-the-art manufacturing hub running at a monthly capacity of 12,000 metric tons, was humming. Pet food was holding the line.
The ‘ai’ of March
An important thing to note is that this recall does not damage RCL Foods in one shot. Instead each vector compounds, chewing through a different layer of that celebrated margin.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/12.jpg "The company has sent a notice to warn shareholders that this break in production will negatively impact pet food profitability in the second half of the financial year. (Photo: Facebook / RCL Foods)")
Unabsorbed fixed costs: The Randfontein plant is engineered to output 12,000 tonnes a month. When production lines stop for deep sanitation and external specialist cleaning teams move in, every fixed cost – depreciation, labour, utilities – runs without a kilogram of product to absorb it.
The company has sent a notice to warn shareholders that this break in production will negatively impact pet food profitability in the second half of the financial year.
Inventory write-offs: The condemned inventory represent sunk manufacturing cost. There is no recoverable value. The COGS for every bag recalled and destroyed is pure margin destruction.
The competitor tax: The most durable damage may come not from what RCL loses, but from the ground it cedes. This recall wiped out a massive percentage of RCL’s dry dog food presence on South African supermarket shelves. RCL was forced to cancel all planned promotional activities through to June 2026 to manage the supply chain crisis, leaving those shelves cold while competitors run hot.
Winning those consumers back will not be free. It will require exactly the kind of margin-destroying structural spend that makes accountants lose sleep.
The 10.9% gross profit margin was built on premiumisation and discipline. Reclaiming market share after a salmonella recall is the opposite of premiumisation.
Decode your pet pantry
The NCC recall directive is built around specific best before or expiry dates linked to product descriptions, rather than traditional alphanumeric batch numbers.
Consumers should check bags against the company’s published list. Notable affected product dates include:
Bobtail 2in1 Adult Gravy Coated Steak Flavour (1.5kg): Best Before 12 Sept 26
Catmor Dry Adult Salmon (1.75kg): Best Before 15 Sept 26, 20 Sept 26 and 21 Sept 26
Other affected brands: Canine Cuisine, Optimizor, Ultra Pet, Bonzo and Feline Cuisine.
Small loss, big damage
RCL Foods has correctly called the stock losses about 1% of annual pet food production. In isolation, that is a manageable hit. But, unfortunately, this crisis does not exist in isolation.
This ship hits land in the middle of a sugar business in freefall, in a financial year that was counting on pet food to hold water.
Instead, pet food is now a hole in the hull. Production is paused, promotional calendars are cancelled, shelf space (and rumoured production) is bleeding to Montego and the costs of reverse logistics are building in real time.
The margin that took years of premiumisation and discipline to build will take one brutal half-year to erase.
CEO Paul Cruickshank says RCL did not meet its own standards. What investors are calculating now is exactly how expensive that understatement turns out to be. DM