The future is bright

The future looks bright for New Zealand’s red meat export business, if you go by the presentations at the recent Red Meat Sector Conference in Queenstown.

Over 250 delegates, drawn from processing, farmers, service companies, shippers, economists, and government officials, crammed into the Rydges Lakeland Resort hotel on Monday 16 July for an absolutely packed itinerary of presentations from 17 excellent speakers – several of them from overseas – all with inspirational and thought-provoking messages.

The veritable smorgabord of information, mustered back into its time slots by some able session chairmen, revealed recurrent themes of massive potential for New Zealand meat in emerging markets in Asia, especially China, water issues, the need to engage in best practice, to tell the industry’s story to the public and the rapid, mind-boggling change the emergence of social media has wrought on getting those messages out there.

The first early shoots of progress on the Red Meat Sector Strategy (RMSS) were evident too, not as fast as some would  like, but it’s a start. Nearly a quarter of billion dollars of industry-government money is being spent on re-shaping and vertically integrating some parts of the red meat chain over the next seven years through Primary Growth Partnerships (PGP) programmes. These are alone forecast to add somewhere in the region of $3 billion to the country’s GDP by the mid-2020s. Meanwhile B+LNZ Economic Service’s team, under the guidance of Rob Davidson, have been developing a natty set of matrices that will enable industry to see how it is progressing along the Strategy’s path (more of that later).

Delegates will be picking out of it what they need. They were certainly upbeat and eager to hear more right to the last speaker of the business sessions, Nigel Latta, who talked about behavioural change and how to make it.

There is no doubt that more is bound to come from discussions at conference and later. Well done to the joint organisers, the Meat Industry Association and Beef+Lamb NZ Ltd.

A more full report will appear in Food NZ August/September 2012 magazine in early August and MeatExportNZ will be covering other items emanating from the conference over the coming week or so. You can find most of the presentations already up online at the MIA website, along with the programme.

 


Recommended reading

Red Meat Sector Conference presenters recommended a number of books to check out:

  • Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable (ISBN 978-1-59184-317-7), Seth Rodin, published 2009 by Portfolio . Recommended by Rick Stott, Agri Beef.
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (ISBN 0-316-31696-2), Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000. Also recommended by Rick Stott.
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow (ISBN 9781429969352) , Daniel Kahneman, published Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Recommended by Nigel Latta.

Separately, Tiger Head, Snake Tails (ISBN 978 1 84737 393 9), Jonathan Fenby, 2012 Simon and Schuster is a must-read for those wanting to understand China better.

Second Red Meat Sector Conference

Closing speaker for conference: clinical psychologist Nigel Latta.

High quality speakers and ample opportunities to network are on offer to delegates from the meat industry, farming and their service sectors at this year’s Red Meat Sector Conference.

We’ve been given a sneak preview of the content of the meat industry’s second annual conference, which will take place at the Rydges Lakeland Resort in Queenstown. The event is co-hosted once again by the Meat Industry Association (MIA) and Beef + Lamb New Zealand Ltd (B+LNZ).

Keynote speakers include clinical psychologist, author and self-confessed ‘wearer of socks’ Nigel Latta and Swazi Apparel’s Davey Hughes. They are joined by a dozen or so other presenters to focus once more on the core themes identified in the Red Meat Sector Strategy launched in May 2011.

After scene-setting presentations from Colin James of the Hugo Group and Richard Brown of European market research group GIRA, three sessions will cover the themes of the Sector Strategy.

In session one: meeting the needs of consumers will be the focus of Arron Hoyle of McDonald’s and Murray Johnston of Progressive Enterprises, while John Carroll of AVANZA avocado growers will look at managing market supply.

Australian and US perspectives regarding procurement will be explored in the second session, while best practices will be explored by B+LNZ Economic Service’s Rob Davison, Mark Paine of Dairy NZ and farming leader Doug Avery.

The conference will close with a session on behavioural change from Nigel Latta.

Two major social events are planned during the conference; a Welcome Cocktail Function, supported by Hamburg Sud, to be held on the evening of Sunday 15 July; and a Gala Dinner, sponsored by Maersk Line, to be held on the evening of Monday 16 July at which Davey Hughes of Swazi Apparel will speak.

For the first time, ANZ bank has taken the premier sponsorship role.

Don’t miss out: register online and find more information at www.mia.co.nz.

RED MEAT SECTOR CONFERENCE: THANKS TO SPONSORS

Premier: ANZ

Gala Dinner: Maersk Line

Welcome Cocktail Function: Hamburg Sud NZ Ltd.

Pre-networking drinks: Milmeq

Morning and afternoon teas: Triton Commercial Systems

Gold: AgResearch, Bell Gully, Ecolab, Milmeq and System Controls Ltd.

Silver: Industrial Research Ltd, NAIT Ltd, Port of Tauranga, SATO NZ Ltd and Sealed Air NZ.

Delegate bags: Bemis Flexible Packaging Australasia Ltd.

Other: Marfret Compagnie Maritime.

Published in Food NZ magazine (June/July 2012).