featured in this issue - NZIFST - The New Zealand Institute of Food ...

MIA NEWS
Meaty Morsels
Snippets from the vast array of research, technical, market and policy information received by the
Meat Industry Association
Ali Spencer
• Lamb pricing trends positive - Lamb is bucking the trend
of falling prices for New Zealand agricultural exports and
is well placed to capitalise on global demand for quality
food. The MIA and Meat & Wool NZ say that while the
ANZ Commodity Price Index for December 2008 showed
monthly price falls of 2.4% for lamb and 1.4% for beef, the
trend over the whole of the last year tells a different story.
MIA member meat companies
report current sales returns
from lamb are well up on
those 12 months ago, says MIA
chairman, Bill Falconer. “This
is illustrated by NZX Agrifax
data which shows earnings
for lamb cuts to the EU are up
30% on the same time last year
and racks and forequarters into
Asia and the US are up 28%.
This is significant and even
with uncertain times, given
the global financial crisis, we
remain cautiously positive
going forward,” he says,
adding that beef into North
America tells a similar story.
Earnings for New Current beef returns are 25-30%
Zealand lamb are up 30% ahead of a year ago. Beef and
on last year and it’s a lamb exports remain a strong
similar story for our beef, performer alongside other
says Bill Falconer agricultural products with over
$4 billion of export annually,
demonstrating the benefit of its positioning as a quality
food, rather than a traditional agricultural commodity
• Heaver carcase weights offset lower export lamb numbers
- the Meat & Wool New Zealand Economic Service says
drought and dairy expansion have reduced this year’s lamb
numbers to 27.3 million - a drop of 4.7 million or 15%
fewer than last spring. According to the Service’s director,
Rob Davison, this is because of a smaller breeding flock
(26.3 million), a drop in the number of lambs born per
ewe (down from 118% to 113%) and fewer lambs from
ewe hoggets (down by 50%). Export lamb numbers are
estimated to fall 6.15 million to 20.36 million, a decrease
of 23.2%, confirming earlier Economic Service estimates.
However, heavier lamb carcase weights this year are
expected to provide some offset to the large decrease in
lamb numbers. “Lamb carcase weights are estimated to be
up 7.5% on last year to 17.7kg. Production on a carcase
Drought and dairy expansion have reduced lamb
numbers, says Rob Davison of the Meat & Wool
Economic Service.
weight basis is therefore predicted to fall 17.5% to 361,000
tonnes,” Davison says.
• Lower hot water bill for meat company - Auckland Meat
Processors has reduced hot water use in its Otahuhu
plant by more than a third. According to EECA News,
the company received an Energy Intensive Business
Grant from EECA that enabled it to introduce innovative
technology for cleaning down the slaughter rooms. Before
the project started, moving conveyors were washed in
a non-stop sequence of two sprays - one 88 degree C
water sterilisation spray and one cold spray to cool the
area. Replacing the continuous wash with an ‘on-demand’
wash cycle, with controls installed across production
floors, made significant savings possible, EECA News
says. Proximity sensors ensure that the processing tables
are automatically cleaned and sterilised before the next
carcase arrives. Hot water is only applied to places that
have been used and finally when processing stops. The
design of the pipe system that moves the hot and cold
sprays back and forth for a thorough clean of the beef
tables enabled another valuable saving - cleaning time was
reduced by half. With no existing technology to base the
system on, design involved calculated trial and error that
took 12 months to get right, but the results are well worth
it, says John Farmer, AMP’s engineering manager, in the
newsletter.
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Food New Zealand