The Country 07/09/26: Tom Young talks to Jamie Mackay

Affco’s national livestock manager looks at the prospects for lamb for the 26/27 season.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great to be back on the country, back on the tools,
and it's great to catch up with old mates who
were really concerned when I was off for three weeks crook,
including this man, the National Lightstock Manager for AFCO, Tom Young,
who sent me a text a week or so ago saying,
I'll send you down a jar of North Island water
from Harden Up Creek. That's a bit harsh, Tom.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, deep down I was very concerned because I'd actually
spoken to Rowena and she said you weren't well, Jamie, so...
Bit of tongue-in-cheek stuff. And when you didn't respond in
a hurry, I thought, well, he's either died or he's sulking.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Now, I can confirm none of the above. Hey, good
to catch up with you. Just put on your meat hat.
I see Beef and Lamb New Zealand is about to
publish its new season outlook report for the week, this week,
for the 26-27 season. And they're talking pretty round numbers.
20 kilo lamb, 200 bucks, $ 10 a kilo. That'll please you, Tom,

(00:58):
because nothing you love more than talking the schedule down.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
That's a bit unfair. Now you're getting stuck into me.
We've let it up many times. So talking it down
is a bit of a reality. But yeah, I think
the fundamentals for red meat, Jamie, remain pretty good. You know,
only speaking from AFCO's perspective, but at the moment it's
reasonably hard trading. I think, you know, this time of year, obviously,

(01:24):
it's a bit more procurement pressure driven and probably market related. So, yeah,
obviously these different schedules are going to work their way back.
I think, you know, if we get land back to
$ 10 or it's settled there, that'd be a good result
for possibly meat companies and the farmers. And obviously, you know,
some of those meat schedules have got a wee way
to come off too. Beef schedules, sorry, have got a

(01:46):
wee way to come off as well.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Now, I know you're based on Hawke's Bay, should I say.
My old mate up there, Mark Warren's banging on about
his $ 1, 500 lamb. We've got a way to go, obviously,
to get there. But we have seen lambs getting close
to $ 500, albeit they're bloody big ones.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that might be a bit of
a sort of an anomaly through the sale yards or whatever, or,
you know, a butcher's lamb or something along those lines.
But I don't think you'll see that at a meat processor.
You know, probably we've seen farmers averaging, you know, mid $ 200.
Some have made $ 300 on a lamb. So they've all

(02:24):
done pretty well and probably had a successful winter trade. But,
you know, sorry, but the real crux of this whole
industry is, You know, the breeders making sure they get
their drink of the trough in the middle of summer.
So it's the bottom of the schedule when they sort
of start killing their lambs that makes the difference.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Will there be enough lambs to go around this year?
The lamb crop is forecast to be broadly stable at
just under 20 million, down 0.3%. And obviously that's dependent
on what happens this spring.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Look, there's never enough lambs to go around. There's too
much capacity. There has been for some time and still is.
At some point, we need to see some sort of rationalisation.
I think it's sort of a game of who's going
to blink first and we just keep sort of trudging
on with how we're doing things. But at some point,
there will need to be factories shut.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
What are you guys at AFCO doing or how are
you factoring in the Super El Nino? Because I know
some people say it's scaremongering. It may or may not happen,
but the science certainly suggests it will.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, I mean, all we can do is get our
capacity on early. We're sort of looking at the lamb weights.
We don't really want to see a whole lot of
light lambs come through the plant, so we've got a
bottom-end weight range of 15 kilos in our schedule, and
anything under that is not much for a lamb. There's

(03:51):
a lot of opportunity lost when meat companies kill lambs
Very light. So what we're going to try and do,
or what we are doing, is looking at all our plants,
getting the second shift up as quickly as we can.
We are talking to markets about possibly having a little
bit more volume coming earlier, and that's about as good

(04:12):
as we can sort of.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Do, really. How's Hawke's Bay looking?

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Hawke's Bay is very dry, although you've seen up some
rain kindly in the last day, so we've just started
to see a little bit of rain now.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Well, Tom Young, I can tell you some of my
farming mates down in Southland who I've been keeping in
touch with are more than happy to send up some
of their excess moisture to Hawke's Bay and we can
even the map out a wee bit. Hey, thanks for
your time. And I know you were only joking when
you were giving me grief when I was on my deathbed.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
No, it's good to have you back. And there'll be
a few politicians a bit worried now you're back as well.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Thank you very much for your time, Tom.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Wonderful. Thanks a lot, Jamie.