APN May 2017

Phone: 07 4697 3344 • Fax 07 4697 3532
www.stockyardindustries.com
Vol 21. No. 5 May 2017 Australian Pork Newspaper PO Box 387 Cleveland 4163 Phone (07) 3286 1833 Fax (07) 3821 2637 Email ben@porknews.com.au
Pork industry students with David Faulkner (workshop facilitator) and Dr Robyn Terry (APL).
Workshops for student development
around our industry and where it is going in terms of prices and profitability, Pe- ter Haydon and I have been in discussion with a number of our state farming bodies, offering to meet with inter- ested producers to discuss these issues.
We have such meetings ar- ranged later this month in South Australia and Victoria (if interested, speak to your local state pig farming body), a meeting with a producer group in Queensland later this week (with the possi- bility of further meetings if desired) and a meeting under discussion in NSW.
We’re also open to ap- proaches from other states if a visit around a meeting would be of value to local producers
Pig prices are expected to be a major topic of interest at the forthcoming Delegates’ Forum in Adelaide on May 18 at the Adelaide Oval.
Ted Campbell from B E Campbell has agreed to pre- sent his observations on what is going on at the Forum, after which we’ll open up a discussion on prices and what we can do about them.
APL members are also in- vited to attend Delegates’ Forums as observers at their own cost – for details on this possibility, please con- tact Elzet Vermeulen at APL (Elzet.vermeulen@australi anpork.com.au).
Stockyard Industries 54 King Street,
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UNDERGRADUATE and postgraduate students as well as the Pork CRC’s Industry Placement Program partici- pants recently travelled to Bendigo for the Victorian Pig Fair.
Prior to the VPF, Australian Pork Limited and Pork CRC held a pork industry student workshop focused on the stu- dents’ professional and per- sonal development within the industry.
The VPF student workshop was designed to give the stu- dents the tools necessary to succeed in their current roles and to prepare them for future employment.
The student workshops and attendance at producer events such as the VPF are crucial to informing our future scien- tists of the key issues affecting our industry and they are inte- gral to forging and retaining passionate researchers within our industry.
This recent workshop, conducted again by David Faulkner of David Faulkner & Associates, was focused on first understanding and communicating with differ- ent personality types and second, on strategies to ef- fectively convey your mes-
sages to your audience.
The students gained a con- siderable amount from the ex-
perience.
Bryony Tucker, recipient of
the 2017 Ronald J Lienert Me- morial scholarship, said: “It was an amazing experience and I got more than I expected out of it.”
Prior to the VPF, the students also attended the Student and Industry Dinner, sponsored by the VPF committee and attend- ed by various industry repre- sentatives, APL and Pork CRC.
The highlight of the evening
was the presentation by Dr Darryl D’Souza, CEO Sun- Pork Solutions, on what the students should expect follow- ing the completion of their studies and what to expect when working for the pork industry.
If you’d like to know more about the pork industry student workshops (next workshop to be held at the Australasian Pig Science Association con- ference in November 2017), please contact Dr Robyn Terry on 0427 423 869 or robyn.ter ry@australianpork.com.au
Students Danni Wijesiriwardana (University of Melbourne), Bryony Tucker (University of Adelaide) and Jessica Craig (Rivalea) discussed how to tackle their group project.
The price of pork industry stability
I DON’T need to tell any- one involved in the pork industry that pig prices ex- farm gate this year have been a disastrous story.
We’re hoping there’s light at the end of the tunnel around some stabilisation of prices but they have contin- ued to deteriorate through most of April.
In my article last month, I mentioned about the big January 2017 we had just had with higher numbers in both pig processing and pork pro- duction, leading to a year on year pork volume increase of close to 5 percent.
While an interesting growth rate for our produc- tion, I don’t believe the speed and extent of the on-farm price decreases can be ex- plained just by the increase in pork supply.
This is a position I have come to more and more over the past month.
February statistics for our industry were more modest than those for January, show- ing that slaughters for the month and pork produced were lower than for February 2016, pulling total volume growth year on year back to 4 percent.
This level of supply growth does not explain a reduction in pig prices by $1/kg or more since Christmas.
This is especially true when we remember that population growth is about 1.5 percent per annum in Australia.
Year on year, exports have grown in volume by 12 per- cent and imports have con- tracted by 4 percent, so there doesn’t seem to be anything negative going on there either.
However, when it comes to imports, we now see two dis- tinct fronts of import compe- tition – the traditional mid- dles and boneless legs being processed locally into bacon and ham competing with Australian-sourced product
Point of View
by ANDREW SPENCER CEO
and the newer importation of pre-cooked ribs and bellies, which is now directly com- peting with our traditional fresh pork business.
There is some questioning over how these newer-style imports are being reported in the statistics; indeed, wheth- er they are being captured in our import statistics at all.
We are working very hard to clarify this issue because having a handle on what sort of imported pork volumes we are competing with in our fresh pork business is very important.
In any case, discussions with the trade would indi- cate that the amount of these pre-cooked imports going into the foodservice sector is quite significant and likely playing a part in the pressure on farm gate pig prices.
It would also seem that ca- pacity at our processing plants and in particular in boning facilities is under more pres- sure than would be normal at this time of year (in part possibly due to the fire at the Swickers Queensland facility) and this is exacerbated by the number of short weeks at this time of year with Anzac Day and Easter.
Producers are rightly con- cerned about where prices are going to end up, and with them, where the profitability of their businesses is going.
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