Killing space tight at meat plants
Demand for killing space among meat processors remains tight as farmers continue to offload stock because of dry weather throughout the country.
Some farmers were left out of pocket from a December bottleneck, since cleared, which put delays on their lambs going to processors.
Silver Fern Farms supply chain general manager Dan Boulton said lamb and beef processing numbers remained high from dry conditions across much of the country. ‘‘A combination of these volumes and strong in-market prices saw us pay out over $260 million to farmers for livestock in December alone - a record level. All of our plants are operating at or near capacity with additional chains, overtime, nightshifts where we can, and Saturday shifts in play to help accommodate the increased early flows we have seen this season.’’
Greenlea Premier Meats managing director Tony Egan said every year brought challenges and this year there were drier conditions than normal. ‘‘We have worked a lot of Saturdays and overtime to accommodate that in our supply base and we’re still full and we expect to be busy for the balance of the month and into February.’’
Lamband beef processing numbers remained high from dry conditions across Waikato and much of the country.
The heavy rain over early January was positive, but more was needed and more rain now would get them through into autumn. ‘‘It’s that time of the year and it’s certainly not assisted by holidays. You just have to work your way through it the best you can and our farmer suppliers understand that.’’
He said they had tried to be fair to farmers and allocate stock in a prudent fashion.
The situation had frustrated Northland Federated Farmers provincial president John Blackwell who was unable to send stock to his processor before Christmas because of the lack of space.
‘‘There wasn’t enough capacity in the meat processing business to cater for all the stock that needed to be killed and I believe in Northland, and in my case we probably had less killing space than we usually would.’’
Alliance Group general manager of livestock and shareholder service Heather Stacy said their plants were still operating at full capacity. While demand had eased off slightly from rain over the past week, it was still dry in parts of Southland.
Other regions such as Canterbury were looking a lot greener, providing opportunities for farmers in drier regions to sell their stock to these farmers as store animals.