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Tyrolean dried venison:
Adding value to the game
trade
Not all commodity-type venison ends up as goulash.
One long-term fan of New Zealand venison is a specialist
producer of dried game meats in Austria. Ager GesmbH,
based in the picturesque Tyrol region of southern Austria,
manufactures game items and ready meals for distribution
throughout Europe.
The company was founded to process local wild shot deer
and wild boar, but as the supply of local game could not
keep up with demand for the company’s gourmet products,
Ager looked to New Zealand as a reputable supplier of
venison.
The main item the company produces is game speck, or airdried
ham. Speck is a very traditional food and part of the
local culinary culture of the Austrian/Italian alpine region.
Meat drying has been practised for centuries as a means of
preserving food for the long, cold alpine winters. The process
is similar to the production of the famous Italian hams such
as Parma, where the only added ingredients are salt, herbs,
mountain air and time.
Ager takes whole muscles from the leg and forequarter
and seasons them with a mix of flavourings. They are then
hung for six months to dry. Over this time they lose up to
40 percent of their weight through evaporation, but develop
deep and complex flavours. The venison is then vacuum
packed into 500g pieces or thinly sliced and laid on trays for
sale. The spec is sold mainly through retailers and Ager’s
customer list is growing with sales throughout Europe.
A recent development has been pre-cooked frozen ready
meals. Ager is producing roast venison, venison goulash and
venison geschnitzeltes (like stirfry) meals using New Zealand
venison. These are pre-cooked and come with a sauce with
a mixture of pre-prepared side dishes. Ager produces these
mainly for the retail sector, where frozen ready-to-cook
meals continue to be among the fastest-growing segments of
European supermarket sales. The product is also useful for
supplying catering establishments that don’t have time or
expertise to create these sorts of dishes from scratch.
Ager prefers frozen venison because the microbial counts and
product shelf-life are consistently lower than chilled. As they
do not depend on a quick turnaround, the company can buy
frozen in larger quantities when they are available and then
manufacture when it suits the business.
Consultation for Venison Industry Strategic Intent 2009-2014
The Venison Industry Strategy helps determine DINZ actions to advance the interests of the New Zealand deer industry.
It is a reference point for the Productivity Strategy, and while no individual venison exporting company is bound by it, it
provides a framework for some individual activities.
The Venison Industry Strategic Intent 2005-2009 is entering
its final year, and while the venison industry has changed
markedly since this strategy was first conceived in 2004, the
underlying issues remain.
In the coming months, venison marketers will be considering
some of the issues they face in establishing stable
profitability for the industry, and making recommendations
for either individual action, or collaborative activities.
The core short-term challenges for the industry are:
• establishing committed supply arrangements from
pasture to plate to provide certainty for marketing New
Zealand venison, and providing some price stability
• increasing venison production to supply a demanding
market, providing sufficient raw material for processors’
needs
• maintaining demand in diverse markets and growing
this demand as supply increases.
The strategy must be adaptable to change. For example,
the original volume targets for market diversification in the
2004-2009 strategy were achieved in year 2 as a result of the
massive increase in production when farmers reduced deer
numbers in 2005 and 2006. However, some of this alternative
The picturesque Tyrol region in Austria is home to game meats
specialist, Ager GesmbH.
business was not established at sustainably profitable prices
for farming deer and, as volumes have fallen, many of these
newer customers have fallen away.
But reducing the industry’s reliance on the traditional
game restaurant sector remains as important today as it did
during the high production period of 2005 to 2007. This is
because over-reliance on sector could expose the industry
to sudden market shocks. Rather than simple volumebased
targets, companies work to diversify distribution
channels, developing specific products for specific users, so
that the volume of venison flowing to European restaurant
wholesalers can be kept in balance with expected demand.
At the same time, the European ‘game’ restaurant will
continue to be the best-returning sector for New Zealand.
For the foreseeable future, affluent Europeans who want
game meals in winter will pay more than any other largeuse
sector, and this will continue to be the focus of venison
marketing activities.
Over coming months DINZ will be working with venison
marketing companies to refine the goals of an industry
strategy, and will seek the views of all participants in the
value chain.
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