Astral Foods Limited provided earnings guidance for the six months ending March 31, 2015. For the six months, the company expects certainty exists that an increase in headline earnings per share will be at least 120% or 465 cents per share, compared to the same period in the previous year 386 cents. As anticipated and reflected in the prospects contained in the results announcement, the improvement in results for the first half of 2015 can be attributed to the following factors: Healthy global maize and soya crops which resulted in the softening of grain prices and subsequently benefitted feed prices and livestock production costs, expansion in feed volumes that now includes production of feed from the recently commissioned Standerton feed mill, previously supplied by Afgri, increase in poultry sales volumes, in particular the expansion in the Western Cape which now includes broilers previously processed by Tydstroom, contracted from Quantum Foods, good poultry production efficiencies together with cutbacks in the comparative period not being repeated, have resulted in increased poultry sales volumes.