Beef worth more than export lamb?

Press, 28 February 1986, Page 20

Beef worth more than export lamb?

Overseas returns from beef may well exceed those from lamb this season, a director of the Meat Board, Mr David Frith, told a big gathering of cattle industry people at Haldon station, in the Mackenzie Country, recently. A healthy, progressive and co-ordinated beef industry will be needed to see pastoral farming through what is proving to be an extremely difficult financial period, he said. Beef looks set to re-

cover one billion dollars in overseas earnings for New Zealand in the year ended June 30, 1986, and in the process it will probably exceed the returns from lamb, and possibly lamb and mutton combined. In the year to June, 1985, beef earned $953 million, lamb SIOI9M, and mutton SI3IM. But the percentage increase in returns for beef compared with the previous year was double that for lamb. In the year to June,

1986, beef returns are expected to rise slightly while those for lamb and mutton fall. Overtaking lamb as an export industry earner while enjoying, in the words of one speaker at Haldon, almost a diversification status, because of the considerable . rundown in herd numbers over the last 10 years, is an exciting position for the beef industry. The industry is again poised on the edge of a strong growth in cattle

numbers and it is from New Zealand’s position on the rim of the Western Pacific [that the required strong growth in export marketing is being planned . The beef marketing manager for Waitaki N.Z. Refrigerating, Ltd, Mr John Brader, told the gathering at Haldon that alternative markets to the United States and the Middle East were to be found in South-East Asia, which might be considered part of New Zea-

land’s “region.” Malaysia had been identified as having great market potential, mainly because of the Malaysian Government’s aim to raise the population from 17 million to 70 million by 2020.

“It is already a good market and has the second-strongest economy in South-East Asia,” he said, “and if they continue to eat beef at the same rate per head then the population growth makes Malaysia an exciting prospect.”

Taiwan had embraced the American hamburger with relish, Mr Brader said, and would be looking for ever-increasing amounts of grinding beef.

As a sort of fair-aver-age-quality product, grinding beef trading is something that New Zealand obviously knows a lot about, seeing that 85 per cent of exported beef still goes to the United States for hamburgers.

But apart from Taiwan, Mr Brader’s Asian growth prospects in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China are aimed somewhat higher on the quality scale.

All the main hindquarter cuts are in demand, particularly in chilled form, and New Zealand pitches at the top of the market.

In only its second season of chilled beef production, Waitaki expects to ship 600 tonnes this season, to South-East Asia, the Middle East and Australia.

The trans-Tasman trade in whole rumps is thriving and the consistent quality

and price, helped by the currency differential, seems to ensure New Zealand a place in eastern Australian restaurants, hotels and butchers’ shops for some time yet This is in spite of that country’s own, much larger beef industry. But the depressed economies of the Middle East, resulting from the drop in oil prices, meant that beef exports to that region were not likely to grow, Mr Brader said. The E.E.C. was able to put subsidised, intervention beef into Middle East freezer cabinets at a quarter of the prices that New Zealand needed. Scotland and Ireland could also land chilled beef at half the price New Zealand wanted for frozen.

But Waitaki, which is New Zealand’s largest exporter of sheepmeats and kills about 10 per cent of the nearly 2 million cattle killed annually (from a total of 8 million cattle — 4.7 M beef and 3.2 M dairy) will maintain a presence in the Middle East beef

market by good service through its Dubai office.

In the United States, he thought a Government encouragement of dairy cow slaughter could produce a surplus of lean beef in the short term but eventually create a shortage to. be filled by imports. The reaction against red meats for health reasons had probably peaked, said Mr Brader, and the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association campaign “Dispelling the 12 myths of beef’ was doing the job for domestic and imported beef.