Good future in lamb exports predicted

Press, 28 December 1985, Page 22

Good future in lamb exports predicted

By ALAN GOODALL in Tokyo The springboard year for a badly needed leap in New Zealand sheepmeat exports to Japan later this decade will be 1986, according to New Zealand’s chief meat marketer in Tokyo, Mr Graeme Harrison. His confidence is based on two assumptions: that a long-term sales promotion in the highly competitive Japanese market will continue to make market-share gains; and that the New Zealand Government will exempt the north Asian market from privatisation reforms.

Mr Harrison, who is Asian director of the Meat Board, rejects criticism that New Zealand performance in the Japan lamb market is unconvincing. The criticism results from a 200-tonne drop in carcase weight equivalent in lamb shipments to Japan and its processing re-export intermediary, South Korea, in the year to June. Mr Harrison said that if 100 tonnes shipped in the first week of the current financial year had been included, the actual increase would have been 800 tonnes.

Lamb being supplied to Japan was moving quickly to consumers rather than

being held in stock as has often been the case.

“Our lamb shipments here have been the highest in two consecutive years on a carcase weight equivalent,” he said. “Statistics alone cannot reveal the trade growth in further-processed sheepmeats.” Mr Harrison defended the role of the board’s two companies, Anzco and Janmark, comparing sales to Japan with Australia’s annual lamb shipments there averaging 5960 tonnes for the last two years and 2180 tonnes in the previous five years. “The lift in Australian shipments was achieved entirely by pricing,” he said. “We could recapture this trade by reducing our prices to be fully competitive with Australia’s, but this would be counterproductive and contrary to our efforts to reposition New Zealand lamb as a high-quality meat.”

The board’s Anzco and the joint promotion with three traders — C. S. Stephens, Ltd, Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd, and Top Trading, Ltd — project a sheepmeat sales rise in Japan in 1986. But much depends on the promotion now gaining momentum continuing on

the basis of New Zealand monopoly access. The Government’s moves to return export markets to private traders will exempt the North Asian market, according to Wellington advice to Tokyo.

“If we don’t perform, we deserve not to hold our position in North Asia,” said Mr Harrison. “We are making sure this will not happen. “We are making inroads in market outlets not available before, such as chilled lamb, and in new products such as canned mutton and lamb to suit the Japanese taste.

“We expect to hold our position in what is a hostile market.

“I see 1986 as a springboard to further market growth which we will achieve by the end of the ’Bos.”

In an end-of-year review, Mr Harrison made these points: • New Zealand’s share of mutton shipments to the north Asian region in the eight years, 1976-83, averaged 32.7 per cent but rose to 52.9 per cent in 1983-84 and to 60 per cent last financial year. • New Zealand became the principal mutton supplier to all north Asian

importing countries for the first time in 1983-84. Except for Taiwan, this continued last year. • On a carcase weight equivalent basis, New Zealand sheepmeat shipments to Japan in the last two years represented an average increase of 36 per cent, or 15,725 tonnes, on the previous four years. • Japan accounted for 24.2 per cent of New Zealand’s mutton shipments on a product weight basis in the four years to 1983 and rose to 39.5 per cent in the last two seasons.

• While Japanese imports of sheepmeats last calendar year were the lowest for 19 years, New Zealand increased its shipments 6000 tonnes and the 1985 supply will be even higher. • For the first time since 1970, New Zealand will provide more than 60 per cent of Japan’s sheepmeat imports for two successive years. • New Zealand mutton shipments to Taiwan in the last two years have risen threefold above the previous four-year average. • Anzco began supplying bulk lamb to Hong Kong last financial year, raising shipments well above the previous two seasons. Copyright, N.Z. Japan News