Export challenge faces new venison industry

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 20

Export challenge faces new venison industry

Deer meat exports should reach about 1550 tonnes with a value of between ?8M and SIOM during the 1982-83 year, the Associate Minister of Finance, Mr Falloon, said when opening the Canterbury Venison (N.Z.) Ltd, factory at Seafield. From eight deer farms in 1970, there was now an estimated 2000 of them and something like 200,000 head of deer on farms throughout the country. Venison exports had dropped from feral exports of 3000 tonnes in 1970 to 1200 tonnes estimated for this fin-

ancial year, of which an increasing amount — at present about 25 to 30 per cent — would be processed at deer slaughtering premises. ■ “But of course we are building up our stock, our expertise, and our processing plants,” said Mr Falloon. There was no doubt that venison had a wider acceptance in world markets than many of our traditional meat exports, as it appealed to both Asians and Europeans. The challenge to the deer farming industry was, however, going to be similar to every other export industry.

The problems were how to keep costs down, quality up, and to establish new markets. An added difficulty was that in many countries their own home industries had political power and the ability to put up barriers against those who threatened them by virtue of their efficiency. He said it was significant and fortunate that so many in New Zealand were recognising that, in order to sell the products they processed, costs must be reduced. “And although you have your problems in Canterbury,

at Islington, the meat-indus-try as a whole has a tone of realism about it. brought on by competition and a recognition that the old practices were squeezing the lifeblood out of those that, produce the product — the farmers." said Mr Falloon.

Supplementary minimum prices were not a producer subsidy but merely a recognition of high cost servicing industries passing on their costs to farmers who had no way of doing the same to the consumer.

There was a breathing space, a period of grace with the wage and price freeze, to get some realism into the domestic cost structure. “We can achieve this without massive unemployment if all are prepared to improve productivity, reduce costs, and therefore sell more on markets overseas." he said.

He rejected “absolutely” any inference that there was no future for this country’s traditional products. But any new dimension to the economy, such as the venison plant, could only assist trading flexibility in tough times internationally. He was pleased that the company had decided to integrate a lamb processing division with its venison plant. Lamb, as a top-priced product in the world’s exclusive restaurants serving French cuisine was, in his view, still largely unemploited as a quality export. The deer industry, as other industries were, was looking for a structure to encourage private enterprise marketing and yet be strong enough to compete internationally. The difficulty with any of the proposals for such structures as a game industry board was that it was impos-

sible to get "the best of both worlds" — to preserve all the elements of free competition and yet gain the advantages of co-operative marketing. His party had a simple principle in such matters. It believed in producer control and so it was extremely important for those in the industry to resolve any differences in order to present a united front to the Government. He congratulated those involved with the construction of the project and the management for initiating a staff training programme to make certain that there were no problems with industrial relations during the start. In a departure from his prepared speech, Mr Falloon commented that he believed that 90 per cent of industrial disputes could be related to "management.”