The Country 04/09/25: John McOviney talks to Jamie Mackay

Waitomo sheep and beef farmer and the chief executive of Steelfort. Today we yarn about the fugitive Tom Phillips, record weaner calf and lamb prices, and why the Dalmatians are on the acquisition trail. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John mcavenie is the chief executive of Steele Fort. He's
also a white homo, sheep and beef farmer. He's been
on the acquisition trial. What is it about you Dalmatians? John,
I'm going to come back to that one, but I
want to start with what's happening on the farm at
the moment. Tom Phillips, the Mara Cooper fugitive was spotted
on your farm anymore sightings?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
No, well, I can tell you now, Jamie. He has
employed for the position of farm manager anyway, so.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
I didn't realize it was vacant.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
No, no, but yeah, apparently he used to do quite
a lot of fencing on team is so he knows
the area quite well. So it's probably where my grandkids
saw him up there six months ago. But yeah, no,
he hasn't been spotted since. But he's he's a bit
of a strange dude, isn't he. He's he just seems
to evade a void and lose himself in the forest here,

(00:53):
and the police just I don't know whether they want
to catch him or well, they just can't catch him.
But you know, I just feel for those little kids.
You know, they're going to be hard for them to
assimilate back into to the normal way of life, isn't
it absolutely?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
What are you going to do with all your money? John?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Or you've got a bit through your business career, You've
worked hard to earn that. I've got no gripes with that.
But all the money you're making on your farm at
the moment. You sold your Wiena carbs recently for a fortune.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, well, we've got nearly sixteen hundred bucks for those,
and we you know, I was going to hang on
to them until the spring. And I don't know whether
I made the right decision or not, but the fact
is we just we Ever it's nearly forteen hundred bucks
for them, and got rid of that sort of three
hundred and fifty odds that we had, and I've got
the money in the bank now. But don't worry. You know,
Brent's out the year and he's pretty good at spending it.

(01:39):
Or we're going to cut seven hundred tons of super
on and we're going to spray one hundred hec dares
of gorse, and you know there's always fencing and whatever.
It's expensive to run a property these days. Don't worry.
We'll get through that money pretty quickly, don't worry.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, the lamb is looking really positive for the season.
It's good. It's overdue for the sheep farmers.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, no, it's very very good. I can only that
the pricing just hangs on. You know, I've seen this
happen before, Jamie, in the past, where you know, the
commodity market, you know, they predict it's going to be
good for this year and next year and five years out,
and you know there's building stocks in America and whatever,
and then two years later being she crashes her on

(02:18):
your knees again. So I'm I'm always a bit cautious
about what happens in the future.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Your name's John McAvennie. But mcavenny is like an anglicized name,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Well, well, my father is from Croatia, from Courtila, which
is Ninland and the Adriatic. It is where our original
name was Markovina m A k O v I n A.
So it's a bit like the Tellies with you know,
they originally televised apparently, so they've sort of anglicized these
But I don't know why, you know, my full fathers
and whatever did that sort of thing. But yeah, that's

(02:53):
we're we're exactly you know, we're from the same area.
And I see they've had a couple of acquisitions this
year and we've done, in our own small way a
couple ourselves as well.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Well, you sell lawnmowers, but you've got the franchise now
for Victor lawnmowers. You described Victor as the mass sport
of Australia. Remember those old TV ads years ago for
the Victor lawnmowers.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yes, if I'm the douda, So is this a big deal? Well,
let's put it this way. Victor, our own were owned
by Britain Stratton Long in the shorter of it. It
has now been bought by a company called PLP or
Gripski's in Brisbane. They've acquired just the Victor brand and
the Valvelin brand, which is an old brand out of

(03:40):
out of the United States, and they've asked us to
handle the Victor and Valveleen products for New Zealand. It
was only announced yesterday and it will take places from
the fourteenth of this month.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Well, good on you.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
You meant to be slowing down in your senior year
as John, you're going harder.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Hey, just a yes or no to finish because I'm
out of time, out of Paris, cout good on. Yep.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Hey John Beckervenny, thank you very much for your time.
Good luck with your new venture with the Victor Mowers.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah. Thanks, Jamie, nice to talk