The Country 12/06/26: Tom Young talks to Jamie Mackay

The national livestock manager for Affco on the red meat bonanza and the best lunch at Fieldays.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can we get Tom Young. He's the man who's responsible,
not a You can't be a shareholder of AFCO because
the Tallies own that, and who wants to argue with
the Tallies a time?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
You know?

Speaker 1 (00:12):
That's right?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah, you do without fear or favor. I can tell
you that you do the best lunches at field days.
I want to talk to you because you're the national
livestock manager for AFCO. I want to talk to you
about that stuff, red meat, the protein boom. You've been
in the business quite a while. Have you ever known
it to be as good as it is right now?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well? No, heaven to be honest. So I mean, we're
sitting on record prices, which I think ever Run's well
aware of, and we can say that the prices are
actually going to go up again next week. So yeah,
we're sort of an unprecedented times And at this point
in time, the outlook, even heading into the next sort
of six to twelve months, still looks positive. I wouldn't

(00:55):
I wouldn't probably look too far past it because it's
very hard to get a view far out. But right now,
the next sort of six to twelve months looks good.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So when you say the price is going to go
up next week, I assume you're talking of what about
the beef and lamb schedules?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
One hundred percent? So you know, we the prices in
both islands are going to lift again, and I think,
you know, there's a little bit left to go. We've
got a LEMB contract out now, we've got two LEMB
contracts out. We've got one in the North Island, one
in the South Island. They peak at twelve dollars twenty,
which I think it was only a few years ago
you were calling me ten dollars Tom. We had a

(01:33):
record of team.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, it's not that long ago. It's like two to
three seasons ago, was it. We were at six dollars,
five dollars eighty and six dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, that's right. So a real turnaround and sort of
the fortunes now. So markets are you know, market's are
fundamentally sound. The world once read meat and that's looking good.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Okay, Lamb's looking really good. We've talked about lamb. What
about beef. That's the big story, especially in the US,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, So I mean beef beef as much as say
I mean beef is going from you know, strong strength
to strength. So again the schedules next week both Prime
bull End and how are going to lift again, So yeah,
the long may it continue