U.K. Butcher On Marketing N.Z. Lamb

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29058, 21 November 1959, Page 9

U.K. Butcher On Marketing N.Z. Lamb

Mr Stanley J. Stevens, who is now conducting a suburban butchery business in Christchurch, is unusually well placed to talk about the marketing of New Zealand lamb in the United Kingdom for he has been selling lamb in Britain since he was a boy and his family, who have been in the trade since 1824, have been handling New Zealand lamb since the beginning of this century. He still has two shops in the isle of Wight and he and his relatives have individually and collectively 26 shops between them in the south of England.

In jthe Isle of Wight Mr Stevens says that he sells 15 New Zealand lambs to every one Home lamb and with about 80 per cent, of lambs consumed being from New Zealand fye claims that consumption of New Zealand lamb per head of the population is the highest anywhere in the world, including New Zealand. Four wholesalers on the island, and three more on the mainland supply the island with New Zealand lamb. The reason why so much New Zealand lamb is eaten is that island farmers run Dorset Horn sheep which give two lamb crops a year. These lambs become available about Christmas and in the early spring when there is a great demand for them on the mainland—last Christmas they were making to 4s a lb. The result is that there are few for the locals. They nevertheless appreciate quality in lamb and in New Zealand lamb, according to Mr Stevens, they have found this. World Trip About a year ago Mr Stevens spent three weeks in this country in the course of a 30-day flying trip round the world. In New Zealand he motored 2150 miles visiting eight freezing works and as well many stock yards and butchers’ shops. Apart from seeing the home of New Zealand lamb he was interested in looking at New Zealand as a potential home for his young family. While not wishing to preach about how New Zealand should handle her lamb Mr Stevens has some thought-provoking ideas about it. He holds that one of the greatest mistakes that wholesalers of New Zealand lamb have made during the last year has been to drop the price to clear supplies. What is not realised, he says, is that today price is not nearly as important as it was pre-war. The housewife's spending is now adjusted rather to a weekly cash allowance for each item of food than obtaining a given quantity in pounds weight, so that there is no longer a direct connexion between cost and consumption. This, he says, is also borne out in New Zealand where the choicest and most expensive cuts are still the first to sell. Sales In U.K. Mr Stevens is confident that sales of New Zealand lambs in Britain can be substantially increased. He makes the point fhat in recent years the appeal to the trade in Great Britain to handle New Zealand lamb has been sadly neglected. It is his belief that with better co-operation from the trade it would be quite easy to lift sales by 10 per cent, which would more, than cover the preaent increase in production. He

calculates that if every British housewife had one more lamb meal a month consumption would increase by the required amount. During the war Mr Stevens says that New Zealand farmers were glad to send their lambs to Britain and the public in Britain were pleased to get them, but to-day mutton and lamb is under Intense competition from a wide range of foodstuffs and in his view the only way to recover the full value of the product is by extensive and unceasing advertising. In this respect he believes that if one tenth of the money lost on last season's New Zealand lamb —estimated at £7m to £ 10m—had been spent on effective publicity in the light of the shortages of beef and other meats thp slump in lamb prices would have been largely averted. Mr Stevens has not been much impressed with the sort of publicity that some wholesalers of New Zealand lamb are using in trade circles in the United Kingdom. He produced the other day a series of cold prosaic advertisements appearing in the “Meat Trades Journal” under the names of some of these firms. One, for instance, carries a long list of branches of the firm in Britain with the additional information that they are importers and wholesalers of meat, poultry, rabbits, casings and canned meats. In fact Mr Stevens says that the British farmers’ organisation, the Fat Stock Marketing Corporation, is leading the field in the imaginative advertising of New Zealand lamb. , Advertising

The sort of advertising to win trade support, which Mr Stevens has in mind for New Zealand's undoubted quality product, would emphasise the margin in profit which a butcher can make by handling New Zealand lamb, the customer confidence and goodwill that it can build up, its assured quality and its established grades and weight ranges, the increased turnover that will result from handling it, and the lack of waste that there is with it. Some of the slogans that Mr Stevens suggests are: “A healthy business and happy holidays because I market the world’s best lamb” and again. “Same old faces week by week thanks to New Zealand lamb.”

In support of this sort of advertising he suggests the issue of a handbook of alternative methods of preparing and selling each joint, well illustrated with simple step by step instructions, which would do much to ensure complete carcase clearance. A specially designed temperature controlled display counter for New Zealand lamb and offal is a crying need in the United Kingdom butcher’s shop, he continues. Such a display counter at a moderate cost, with suitable advertising matter, could well be sponsored by the New

Zealand Meat Producers’ Board in co-operation with leading manufacturers, he sayS.

This would give the New Zealand producer a fair return and allow the British retailer to make a reasonable level of profit while the price to the British consumer would be acceptable. To overcome the diffidence of Americans to New Zealand frozen lamb Mr Stevens suggests that advantage should be, taken of the widespread use of deep freeze cabinets in the United States by preparing special domestic bulk packs for this trade. With America and Britain apparently going to devote more

Mr Stevens believes that, traders like to know something of the origin of their wares so he suggests advertisements which carry information about the production and handling of meat in New Zealand and the inclusion perhaps on grading tags of brief illustrated descriptions of the part of the country in which the lamb is produced.

Competitions While there are window display competitions in England and annual carcase competitions at Smithfield Mr Stevens suggests an extension of these to include prizes for trade apprentices and for new ideas in preparing and selling New Zealand lamb. To encourage sales to the public he asks why not serial number lamb tags and jgive away prizes for lucky numbers. A free air trip to New Zealand for two might be awarded annually and New Zealand novelties such as tikis, paua shell trinkets and carved key rings wrapped in polythene envelopes might be included in say every 50th carcase. Once sales had been increased by promotion to the level of present production Mr Stevens said that a rise in the wholesale price for 29 to 361 b lamb in Britain to an optimum of 2s 2d a pound might be reasonably hoped for.

money to raising living standards in under-developed eastern countries, Mr Stevens sees another chance for New Zealand meat products. While on a long term basis technical and mechanical aid are probably most desirable, he says that food for the undernourished is still the immediate problem and he foresees a situation in which Britain and America would supply New Zealand with manufactured goods for which New Zealand would pay by sending meat to the under-developed countries. Consideration, he thinks, should be given to developing dried meats that could be readily carried and distributed in the east. Urging more expenditure on research into packaging, marketing and presentation of meat, he says that it is often the case in Britain that people buy meat more on appearance than on instrinsic quality. x