The season just ended could produce messy results, according to meat industry commentator Allan Barber.

The two largest processors and exporters, Silver Fern Farms and Alliance, have captured the headlines in the last couple of weeks.

Hot on the heels of its announced intention to close its sheepmeat chain at Mataura, Alliance has come out with an offer to suppliers of $20 in November per lamb contracted before the end of October.

From the other cooperative camp Keith Cooper, chief executive of Silver Fern Farms, last week sent an email out to suppliers which highlighted the disappointing financial result for the year ended 30 September because of the exchange rate and declining sheepmeat values in January and February not being reflected in procurement prices.

The final results will be declared in about two months when the market will be able to see just how disappointing the performance of the two companies actually was. Rumours of multi-million dollar losses have been prevalent, but rumour is just what they are until we see the actual figures. There is no doubt the problem has been almost entirely with sheepmeat in spite of the exchange rate, because exporters have been far more successful at reining in beef procurement costs.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that the shortage of lambs for Mataura and the procurement competition are just two aspects of the same problem. The lowest national lamb kill for 51 years at 18.6 million, 15 percent down on the five year average will have made it very difficult for any company to get sufficient capacity utilisation to come close to making a profit. With Alliance’s largest sheep plant outside Invercargill, Mataura just over 50 km up the road was always under threat from declining volumes.

Blue Sky Meats, which balances in March, presaged the 2011/12 season’s problems in its declared annual result – a pre-tax loss of $604,000 and no dividend paid. The company termed this the most disappointing result in its history and drew attention to the excessive prices paid for stock through the turn of the year, both because of the high dollar and the drought in Southland.

It will be interesting to see how successful Alliance will be in securing committed lambs from suppliers stimulated by the $20 cash advance. Keith Cooper’s reaction was to say Silver Fern Farms had tried it six years ago with no success because some suppliers were affronted by the implication they were short of cash and didn’t want to close out their slaughter options. He prefers to rely on the company’s suite of supply plans rather than to repeat the cash in advance offer.

In his email to suppliers, Cooper sounds quite bullish about the new season’s prospects with a ‘fully configured operating platform’ and some exciting new marketing initiatives, even being bold enough to state that realistic livestock values are being established. If that is the case, it will either be because there’s enough livestock around to satisfy all processors or he is confident Silver Fern Farm’s overhead structure is competitive enough to guarantee filling their requirements.

Either way that is a big call in spite of the gains Silver Fern Farms has made in recent years, notably the closure of the Belfast sheep chain, improvements to its Finegand sheep processing and the rebuild of Te Aroha in the heart of the dairy farming Waikato/Bay of Plenty region. There are expected to be another 1.5 million lambs, but not enough to change processing dynamics much, while the market is another factor.

The meat industry is unique in that it has to compete at both ends of its supply chain. While livestock procurement has the most obvious impact on company profitability, demand from the market is also critical. Last season’s disappointments and losses have been as much about carrying too much inventory which the market couldn’t digest as the cost of the livestock to produce it.

When companies fail to manage both ends of the chain properly, things get messy. Just how messy they were last season will become clearer at the beginning of December when Alliance and Silver Fern Farms publish their results.