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SFF and NZMerino combine to market meat

Rural News
SFF and NZMerino combine to market meat
<p> Now to be marketed as a meat breed.</p>

The marketing of sheep meats on their breed, is a new innovation that could increase the value of some of our products.

Experienced farmers have often commented about the better flavour of Merino wethers often bought for homekill at saleyards.

Now a partnership of NZ Merino and Silver Fern Farms are keen to expose these flavours and tastes to its customers.

The merino brand has been expertly created and reinforced in that breeds wool products, and now they seek to replicate that success in the marketing of meat.

The Texel and Rissington breedlines are others that have tried to quantify their advantages to the meat marketers,and  it will be interesting to see if other breeds follow.

Wool marketer NZ Merino and meat company Silver Fern Farms are forming a joint venture to market and promote merino branded sheep meat and by-products reports The ODT. The initial three-year agreement will see Silver Fern Farms (SFF) process the fine- and mid-micron woolled sheep sourced from New Zealand Merino clients, with meat, offal, leather and lanolin products marketed under a new brand by the still un-named joint venture company.

Growers will be offered three-year supply contracts with annual incremental price increases. Backers have set a first-year goal of attracting half a million sheep. Products will be marketed in the same way that NZM has marketed its merino wool, using the providence of the New Zealand high country, its people and farming systems.

The two parties say the deal was the result of SFF, PGG Wrightson and Landcorp Farming successfully securing Government Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) co-funding. They intend to add value to meat products by establishing a plate-to-pasture structure for meat. SFF chief executive Keith Cooper said the joint industry and Government Primary Growth Partnership funding will allow them to consumer-test the quality attributes of merino meat and assist breeders and growers to produce animals with attributes desired by consumers.

Much was known about the wool attributes of merino sheep, but little about their meat, and Mr Brakenridge said this latest venture was part of a bigger push to make the breed a multipurpose animal. He said many merino farmers consider 2-year-old sheep the best tasting, but under the present meat grading system farmers receive a discounted price for older animals, so sheep are killed younger.

 

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1 Comments

I think this will be good for the sheep industry in general as it does have  a distinct flavour (not nice in my opinion) and will be better marketed seperately so when a consumer picks up a packet of meat they dont have a bad experience as may have happened in the past and present.

The thing I do have a problem with is this stupid PGP. PGG Wrightson ( own part of Merino NZ) will be using the government funds to pay the premium for supplying Merino stock through Silver Fern Farns (pulling some farmers away from their traditional meat company and fragmenting the industry further) rather than the premium coming from the extra revenue gained in niche marketing. I was told by my local PGGWrightson branch manager who sat in on a Merino NZ/SFF meeting the other day that they are talking $6.70 for winter Merino contracts already!! 

I find it crazy that to be part of the PGP you have to supply stock through SFF - even if you spend well over 500K through PGGWright;son like we do every year. The fund should be open to anyone who has an idea worth looking into rather than these two dinosaurs of companies in desperate need of a personnel cleanout.

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