Meat sales to Iran ‘likely to be down’

Press, 15 January 1982, Page 5

Meat sales to Iran ‘likely to be down’

PA Wellington Lamb sales to Iran this year are likely to be well down on last year, savs the Meat Boards chairman, Mr Adam Begg. Sales this year were not likely to be much more than 70.000 tonnes, compared with about 107.000 tonnes last vear.

This was partly the result of the carry-over of four shipments from last vear which had been withheld because of Iran's payments delav. he said.

Final payment for the four shipments was expected to come through soon.

Last years big sales to Iran had also been caused partly by the British seamen's strike, which disrupted supplies to Britain, and high stocks of lamb in Britain early in the season.

“Now that the problems have been cleared up we are moving to negotiate with the Iranian Meat Organisation at a suitable date." Mr Begg said, after a meeting of the Joint Meat Council, the umbrella organisation of board and exporter representatives

of which he is also chairman. "Almost certainly another delegation will have to go to Iran within the next few weeks.” he said.

As long as killing for the 1982 contract started early in February there should be no problem in supplying Iran. If it was delayed there might not be enough halal slaughtering facilities available. In spite of the two-month delay in payment. Mr Begg said, he had confidence in the future of Iran as a main customer.

"There could be short-term problems from time to time, but the main point is that they require meat and will do so for a good many years to come and they have all the oil in the ground to pay." The industry was greatly relieved now that the final payment was being made for the outstanding four shiploads. he said.

The value of the four shiploads — those carried by the Mandama. Pisang. Timaru Star, and Almeria Star — is about $4O million, according to industry sources.

The money is expected tc

arrive m the next few days after the arrival of documents from Argentina with Mr Brian Freeman, marketing manager for Borthwick's, the Meat Board's agent for the contract. The documents had to be signed by an Iranian veterinarian who was in New Zealand when the stock was killed, but left before the lamb was shipped. The payment does not include the shipload carried by the Chion Trader, now at Bahrain, where she was taken after a refrigeration failure. Some of the meat is unfit for human consumption and the question of payment is now between the board and the insurers. The cause of the twomonth delay in payment was not a shortage of foreign exchange in Iran, industry sources said, but upheaval and dissension in the country's administration. Lamb sales to Iran under the 1981 contract earned New Zealand about $220 million, making Iran the second-biggest market after Britain.