Our operations

full value chain

With more than 50 years of industry knowledge and experience we have developed a vertically integrated operating structure built around great people, good values, healthy animals and long-standing client relationships to ensure you experience great-tasting beef, every time.

Pasture Raising

We love our cattle
Raising cattle requires time, dedication and a real understanding of the animal and its needs. Many hours are spent on each animal and our team works diligently to ensure their health and well-being. We raise our cattle on our land in the Free State and North-West provinces of South Africa.

Cattle feeding

Sourcing good stock
At any given time, we feed well in excess of 100 000 cattle supplied by our national cattle buying network as well as our network in Botswana and Namibia. This network, cultivated over many years, ensures a consistent supply of calves into our cattle feeding operation.
Traceability

Our calves are hand-picked from selected breeder farms or through cattle sale yards. Upon arrival, calves are fed, identified, treated and sorted into unique growing groups. All relevant information about each calf is captured on Sparta’s EID system, which ensures full product traceability – from arrival at Sparta to the point of selling the carcass or batch of processed product into the marketplace.

Precision feeding
Our cattle are fed on optimally formulated feed consisting of roughage, protein and high-quality grain. Our calves are pasture-raised and grain-finished. Sparta’s state-of-the-art feed mill ensures that our scientifically formulated feed program is precision-mixed, and adhering to this strict feeding regime ensures a consistent product and taste experience.
A global network

During our more than 50 years in cattle feeding, we have forged many business relationships as well as friendships with experts in South Africa and across the world in the field of cattle feeding. These relationships have enabled us to stay abreast of the latest developments and technology as well as set trends in the South African cattle feeding industry. We are privileged to consult with some of the best veterinarians as well as animal nutritionists across the globe.

We Spartans love our beef, and we hope you will too!

The Group was established in 1966 by the late Dirk van Reenen on the farm Sparta in the Marquard district, in South Africa’s Free State province.

Beef Processing

Producing great beef
Our beef processing plant consists of an abattoir, a beef deboning facility, a retail-ready and value-added facility as well as an offal and by-product facility.
State-of-the-art technology
All our production beef, where a VL is stipulated, travels through our state-of-the-art X-ray equipment. Here, the exact meat-to-fat ratio of the product is determined, and foreign objects are identified that might not be detected by metal detectors. Clients can rest assured regarding the safety of the meat as foreign objects would be identified and removed. Our electronic identification, which starts on the farm at calf intake, is carried through to the slaughter and packaging of our products. This system ensures full traceability throughout the production process and is an excellent quality assurance tool.
Continuous production ensured
To ensure that our continuous operation at our beef plant is not interrupted due to service delivery restraints, we have made some adjustments and additions.
Our water supply runs through a holding tank that can sustain a full day’s slaughter. This means that a drop in water pressure or a break in water supply does not influence our daily slaughter schedule. The same applies to an electricity supply interruption. We have installed generators that can run our entire plant during electricity downtime, and solar panels generate the electricity we use for our IT servers.
Distribution
We have a long-standing business relationship with one of South Africa’s foremost fresh product distributors. Their fleet controller, dedicated to tracking and managing Sparta deliveries, operates from our offices. Their vast fleet of vehicles as well as their robust distribution system ensures that our clients receive their product on time and with our strict cold chain intact.