SFF in no mans land in 'pasture to plate'

Silver Fern Farms (SFF) is in no-man's land on its road to plate to pasture reports Rural News. "We've validated the strategy and we are making good gains," chief executive Keith Cooper told about 100 shareholders who packed into the company's AGM in Gore last week. But there is still a long way to go to implement the integrated supply chain strategy, and commitment and tenacity are needed to complete the transition from the historic procurement and processing focussed model, he says. "We want to make our money by being smart, nimble and highly competitive"¦ We are in no-man's land right now." Cooper says it is not the cooperative's aim to be the biggest processor and it is "unfortunate" it is. As such, it has had no choice but to engage in the current lamb procurement battle, not just to fill processing plants but to meet customers' orders for Easter. "I don't think I can remember a year when we were not killing at 100% in January. The whole industry is chasing stock." Marketing partnerships such as the Angus McDonalds contract, or M&S supply chain, are the cooperative's future and new marketing personnel have been appointed as it "transitions from being a sales business". SFF's European and UK chilled lamb market share is up 5% and 14% respectively already, and on the supply side average lamb weight processed is up 9%, from 15.8kg to 17.2kg. Investment in R&D is also starting to deliver with advances such as X-ray carcase scanning (Finnegan, Pareora and Takapau) and ovine automation coming online, though glitches have delayed scan results going on kill sheets.