Difficulties Of U.S. Lamb Market

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 7

Difficulties Of U.S. Lamb Market

(From Our Own Reporter)

HAMILTON, June 18.

It was clear that some new thinking had to be done about the American market for New Zealand lamb, Mr C. Hilgendorf, a Canterbury member of the Meat Board, told the Ruakura farmers’ conference.

New Zealand was continuing to sell some hundreds of thousands of lambs on this market, he said, but American consumption of lamb was still falling. New Zealand’s share of the market was not improving and the price was not satisfactory. This comparative lack of success was due to a variety of causes. Foremost was the fact that it had not been possible to sell frozen lamb at prices within striking distance of fresh lamb.

Wholesalers would not accept lambs in other than cut forms, which added considerably to costs—about 6d per lb—and while legs brought good prices the return on fore-ends was abysmally low.

Australian lamb came in Intermittently without regard to continuity of supply and undercut New Zealand’s prices. Freight to the east coast of North America was also higher than to the United Kingdom.

“I should make it clear that though the Meat Board is disappointed at the comparative lack of success so far achieved, it is convinced that success is possible. “It is determined that no effort is too great in moving towards that end. It may well, however, take longer and cost more than originally thought. We have got to look at whether we should finance this out of current income rather than past profits as represented in the meat industry reserve account The simplest way would be a levy on all meat, but there may be other preferable ways of doing this.” Mr Hilgendorf recalled that the Meat Board had been in partnership with New Zea-land-owned companies in the Meat Export Development Company in the selling of lamb in the United States.

While re-thinking was being done about this market, the board believed that the time was opportune to bring all freezing companies into closer association with the Meat Export Development Company so that it might become a true partnership between the Meat Board and the industry. Answering a question, Mr Hilgendorf said that he believed that if New Zealand was going to make an impact on the American market it was going to have to sell a new product to new people. “We have been trying to sell a product that we have been pretending that they know,” he said, referring to the sending of heavier weight lambs to this part of the world. These were the sort of lambs that they produced themselves.

There would, however, be a considerable volume of opinion that the same sort of lambs that were popular in Britain should also be sent to this market, and in fact there was no difficulty in selling the lighter-weight lambs there, but while they were purchased in New Zealand on the basis of their London price they earned no premium in America.

“I think that this is part of the rethinking that we have got to do,” he said. “It seems unlikely that we can. break into the market in the way we have been going.”