British lamb market ‘could dry up’

Press, 16 September 1982, Page 3

British lamb market ‘could dry up’

PA Auckland • Britain, New . Zealand’s biggest lamb market and most important meat market, could be dried up in five years, according to the managing director of Hellabys. Ltd, Sir Alan Hellaby. “We are fighting for our lives," he told a farming seminar in south Auckland organised by Karaka Federated Farmers yesterday.

If New Zealand was 100 inflexible, with pricing and supply of lamb it would lose overseas customers and there would soon be no market for New Zealand meat, he said. New Zealand could well have an excess of 50.000 tonnes of unsold lamb (worth more than $lOO million) at the end of this season. “This we must avoid because it will have a serious effect on next year's market.”

Farmers would be protected in the meantime because of the Government’s supplementary -minimum price scheme. “But one day someone has to pdy. and as the earners of the wealth of the country, it will inevitably be you,” he told the farmers. Sir Alan said Britain was still New r Zealand’s most important meat market but at the rate of production now forecast for United Kipgdomproduced lamb, “we must accept that we may not even be. needed in five years time.” Grade for grade, New Zealand meat was the highestpriced imported meat sold anywhere in the world and right now’ New Zealand lamb was being priced higher than fresh lamb produced in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sir Alan talked of huge food, surpluses being produced in Europe and warned

farmers against pushing for more lamb subsidies. “Marketing in. international markets oversupplied with goods is a highly professional game which requires some unusual and sometimes unpalatable practices." he said.

“Do not let the accusations about harmful price-cutting colour all your thinking about how we’should market overseas.

“No-one objects to price cutting at the supermarket — as consumers we enjoy it and expect it. We must not be surprised if it happens elsewhere in the distribution chain. Keeping your product before the customer is much more important for a longterm. stable market.” Sir Alan emphasised that he was not advocating pricecutting as a means to selling but that goods had to be priced correctly in order to keep consumers buying.