Tag Archives: Bill Falconer

Meat industry leaders support TPP negotiations

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Heads of various meat industry organisations  have shown their public support for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement negotiations underway in Auckland this week between eleven APEC economies.

They are amongst more than 50 business leaders from some of New Zealand’s largest and most successful companies and business organisations to have signed an open letter to Prime Minister John Key, underlining the importance of international trade and investment for New Zealand.

Among the signatories are Alliance chief executive Grant Cuff, ANZCO Foods’ managing director Mark Clarkson, Silver Fern Farms’ Keith Cooper, Greenlea Premier Meats’ Tony Egan and Sir James Wallace chairman of Wallace Corporation alongside Meat Industry Association chairman Bill Falconer and Beef + Lamb NZ Ltd’s chairman Mike Pedersen and chief executive Scott Champion.

“The signatories to the open letter represent a cross section across all major export sectors in New Zealand, including agriculture, forestry, fishing, horticulture, wine, manufacturing, technology and Maori business. Together they either directly employ, or their members employ, an enormous number of Kiwis,” says the chairman of the New Zealand International Business Forum (NZIBF), Sir Graeme Harrison.

“These business leaders welcome the TPP round taking place in Auckland this week and commend negotiators from the TPP economies for their efforts to conclude a future agreement which should bring benefits for all member economies”.

“The group is aware the negotiation poses challenges for New Zealand policy settings in a number of areas and that the negotiation is complex. We have confidence that Trade Minister Tim Groser and his officials will seek solutions that meet New Zealand’s national interests.”

“We see great advantages for New Zealand arising from a future agreement that is high quality, comprehensive and ambitious, one that eliminates trade barriers, lowers the cost of doing business and makes improvements to the way regional supply chains can link producers and consumers in the region.”

The open letter coincides with the launch of a new business-led initiative, Trade Works, a website (www.tradeworks.org.nz) to help Kiwis better understand the benefits of trade and investment for New Zealand, and understand the potential benefits of TPP.  Funding for the website has been provided by the NZ US Council and the website has been built with the support of thirteen business organisations representing the main export sectors.

“The Council and its partners see value from an effort to create a TPP which meets business and wider needs and reflects the way business is being done today and will be done in the future.  This will assist economic growth and job creation in New Zealand.  Our new website signals that we are also ready to participate with other members of civil society in a dialogue about how TPP can contribute to what it is best for New Zealand,” says the chairman of the NZ US Council, Rt Hon James Bolger.

 

One man and his dogs

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The work of one man over the last four decades has contributed to the eradication of one significant disease and the control and reduction in incidence of another meat quality issue, earning him the respect of his meat industry colleagues.

Geoff Neilson, sheep farmer and chairman of Ovis Management Ltd (OML), has retired after a role spanning 41 years.

Starting in 1971, when he was elected to the Hydatids Council, Geoff contributed not only to the enhancement of sheep meat quality but also to the eradication in New Zealand of hydatids, which caused significant numbers of deaths and hospital admissions in New Zealand.

With the disbandment of the Hydatids Council in the early 1990s, there then became a need for the sheep industry to focus on another parasite Cysticercus Ovis, also known as ‘sheep measles’. The condition was not a human health issue, but was a meat quality issue that had the potential to erode market share and income for farmers and meat companies.

Geoff was the inaugural and only chair of OML until his retirement at the OML AGM on 28 August. OML was established by, and is funded by, sheepmeat processors through the Meat Industry Association (MIA).

MIA chairman, Bill Falconer, paid a formal tribute to Geoff’s lifetime commitment to the meat industry at the recent Red Meat Sector conference in Queenstown.

The OML board has elected a new chairman, Roger Barton, a sheep and beef farmer from Greytown in the Wairarapa.

This article has appeared in Food NZ magazine (October/November 2012).

Boot camp stimulates insights

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The outcome of the Boot Camp, which was held two weeks ago at Stanford University, has not – for obvious reasons – been widely trumpeted, writes industry commentator Allan Barber.

 

After all, the objective was never to produce yet another sector strategy, long on analysis of the problem and short on achievable actions to produce a state of nirvana.

Bill Falconer, chairman of the Meat Industry Association, was chosen as the spokesperson for the Boot Camp because he did not represent a single company, but an industry body. The senior executives who attended did not see the merit of or justification for purporting to speak on behalf of their peers from a wide range of rural sector businesses. Therefore, Falconer was the obvious person to speak on their behalf.

The Boot Camp’s objectives, simply stated, were seen as:

  1. To allow the attendees to learn from the professors and to visit US companies in different industries, which would enable them to see how to become consumer driven.
  2. To take six days out of day -to-day business and examine their business from a different perspective.
  3. To see how or whether individual companies could collaborate to their mutual advantage.

Falconer told me that is was one of the most stimulating and encouraging gatherings he had attended, with 20 CEOs and top managers from across the agricultural sector learning from six outstanding marketing professors how to lift their game for the benefit of their companies, industry sectors and agribusiness as a whole.

The conclusions from the Boot Camp can be looked at against the backdrop of the Government’s growth agenda to double exports or otherwise expressed as lifting exports from 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP by 2025.

The visits to companies near Stanford were immensely helpful in gaining an understanding of how the export target might be achieved. The first important conclusion is that there is no point in increasing production on-farm, or in any other environment for that matter, unless you can sell it.

In order to start working out how to sell the extra production, an understanding of consumer demand is necessary, becoming market- not production-driven and planning how to lift performance accordingly. A major insight was the scale of social media used by all the companies visited, a country mile ahead of any New Zealand company, including Icebreaker, which is seen as a leader in the New Zealand context.

I suspect, although Bill Falconer didn’t say so, that tangible results from the Boot Camp will of necessity be slow to eventuate. Nor is it likely that companies will feel the need to make a lot of noise about any specific programmes they develop, either in collaboration or on their own, until there is something concrete to report.

However, if the Boot Camp has achieved a change in attitude about the nature of the task and provided a blueprint of how to go about lifting sales and marketing performance, this will prove to be the best outcome. There has been too much navel-gazing analysis of the size of the problem and the same old strategies to solve it, without any real change in behaviour.

Ideally, agribusiness needs a Messiah to preach the new marketing gospel until the sector as a whole becomes customer- or consumer-driven.

Delivered: second Red Meat Sector Conference

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Delivered, as promised: Excellent, inspirational and thought-provoking speakers, all appearing in a packed programme for the 250 delegates attending the second Red Meat Sector conference.

Congratulations must go to the Meat Industry Association (MIA) and Beef + Lamb NZ Ltd (B+LNZ), joint organisers of this year’s well-attended Red Meat Sector Conference at Rydges Lakeland Resort hotel in Queenstown.

Alongside heartening optimism for future demand for red meat, recurrent themes were the massive potential for New Zealand of emerging markets in Asia, especially China, water issues, the need to utilise best practice, the need for all links in the chain to tell the industry’s story to the public, plus the rapid emergence of social media as a tool for communicating with consumers.

In his opening comments, MIA chairman Bill Falconer also noted that, while not as quickly as some would like, encouraging progress is being made on the Red Meat Sector Strategy and that “small starts are being made across the board.” Later in the day Rob Davison, from the B+LNZ Economic Service, outlined a number of matrices that the Economic Service is developing that will help to track progress against the strategy, and these matrices will “focus conversations, thinking and actions to drive the future”.

The Conference also saw the announcement of new Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) funding for the red meat sector, for a project to develop high-value grass-fed marbled beef, using Waygu genetics.

All the presentations were a veritable smorgasbord of information, packed with facts, statistics and views from many facets of the industry, enabling delegates to pick out what was relevant for their part of the value chain. While every single one of the speakers was passionate and eloquent about their topic, from an export food manufacturing perspective the highlights were excellent presentations from McDonald’s Arron Hoyle and vertically integrated meat processor Agri Beef’s Rick Stott from the US.

Besides the serious business, there was entertainment and laughter too. Lunch – finger food featuring B+LNZ Ambassador chef Ben Battersbury’s speciality “alternative cuts, not cheap cuts” like lamb riblets –  was amusingly heralded with witty comments from him. After dinner speaker Davey Hughes of Swazi Apparel gave an hilarious account of hunting expeditions in Africa and shared a few (tongue-in-cheek) items from his latest collection, including a new ‘mankini’.

Also noteworthy, was a significant Australian presence at the conference in the form of representatives from Meat & Livestock Australia and Aus-Meat. This put physical form to MLA’s managing director Scott Hansen’s opening comment in his presentation that “Australia sees a close collaboration with New Zealand.”

There was positive feedback from delegates, who came from all parts of the sector, including farmers, processors, equipment suppliers, researchers and media.

This article appeared in Food NZ magazine (August/September 2012). Copies of most of the conference presentations are available at www.mia.co.nz or redmeatsector.co.nz.