New meat industry model emerging

After several false starts a new model for the meat industry looks to be evolving tentatively in a more strategic way than appeared likely 12 months ago. Then, various companies, farmer groups and industry bodies were thrashing about trying to find a magic answer to solve the industry’s problems, but all the attempted changes sank without trace under a combination of mistrust and lack of enthusiasm for the proposals.

Advertisement

Silver Fern Farms’ has disappointing half year, but hopes for year end profit

The transformation of Silver Fern Farms (SFF) from a disjointed monolith across two islands and a large number of ageing plants to a leaner, efficient, market led meat processor remains very much a work in progress. The half year loss to the end of February represents a disappointing turnaround from last year of $31.1 million pre-tax and $16.2 million after tax to losses of $16.7 million and $5.9 million respectively.