‘Lucrative’ Meat Markets

Press, Issue 32345, 10 July 1970, Page 7

‘Lucrative ’ Meat Markets

Lucrative markets exist for a wider range of spec!ality meat products, an officer of the meat export development company, Mr P. J. Wakelin, told meat industry specialists at a conference in Hamilton this week. But in providing specialty meat products for export New Zealand would need a trained pool of labour and sophisticated machinery, Mr Wakelin said, according to the Press Association. “It is here that we come unstuck,” he said. “To whom can we turn today, right now, for firm commitments, guaranteed monthly deliveries of simple boneless lamb, much less sliced, exact weight, automatically packed consumer portions, television dinners and the like. “The present lamb cutting room in a freezing works is probably the last place to look, with only one or two possible exceptions,” he said. “Although many companies are doing an excellent job with primal cuts in existing facilities, it will not be possible to move to our next step with existing facilities and staff left over from the seasonal labour pool.” Mr Wakelin suggested the establishment of a specialised room within a freezing works.

i Here the raw product would be readily available, investment in premises would be i low, and overheads would be minimised. “However, unless this operation is managed as a separate organisation purely using space within a works and most certainly not reporting in an organisational sense through it, it will have less than a 50 per cent chance of success,” he said. Speaking of the American market, Mr Wakelin said: “The need is to vacuum pack consumer portions and have them flexographically printed in colour, complete with national or, better still, brand identification.

“We must, in fact, package here, to an equal or better standard than products we will be competing against in the United States,” he said. It was vital that a thoroughly defatted product was produced. Mr Wakelin said a buoyant market existed for lamb patties, which could be produced in a wide variety of shapes through dies ranging from round, or square to French cutlets. To produce quality products the industry must face up to the need for first-class, up-to-date equipment for the job, automatic machinery and a minimum of people, he said.