Beef forum updates industry
The Department of Agriculture and Food's Northern Beef Futures (NBF) project recently hosted a northern beef forum in Karratha to provide insights from across the supply chain.
One of Indonesia’s largest importers of Australian cattle, the Great Giant Livestock Company (GGL), provided an overview of how their cattle operation is integrated into their parent company’s tropical fruit production business and how this integration is driving growth of feedlot operations.
GGL imports cattle from northern Australia via several Australian exporters. General Manager Dayu Ariasintawti said that GGL predominantly selects cattle with high Bos indicus content and lighter colours due to local market preferences and the climatic conditions in south Sumatra.
Ms Ariasintawati explained the primary market for cattle leaving GGL’s feedlot is the traditional wet market, where all meat needs to be sold on the day of slaughter due to a lack of refrigeration. Butchers in these markets prefer light slaughter cattle between 420-480kg live weight.
In Indonesia, there is growing demand from modern retail markets, hotels and restaurants for chilled meat. GGL is starting to target these markets and is looking to source (and grow out to heavier weights) cross bred cattle, with a greater focus on meat eating quality attributes.
GGL has a long term vision to double to size of its cattle operation and diversify its market outlets.
Also at the forum, Harvey Beef’s Kim McDougall provided an overview of the company’s new online producer portal which provides access to feedback on carcase performance and grading information.
This feedback allows producers to better understand how their cattle perform against processors’ specifications and reveal opportunities to improve quality and compliance.
Harvey Beef has recently built a new livestock aggregation facility on Uaroo station near Onslow which provides an alternative delivery location for northern cattle heading south for processing .
WA Live Exporters Association representative Harold Sealy encouraged producers to stay informed, match their production to peak periods of demand, understand the needs of end-users and explore alternative business models and production systems to gain advantages and added value.
For further information about the forum, contact Andrew Negline, Broome Operations manager, on +61 (0)8 9194 1441or email nbf@agric.wa.gov.au