MORE than 12,000 kangaroos harvested from a vast area stretching from Mount Isa in the north to Gilgandra, NSW, in the south are processed every week at the Game Meat Processors (GMP) plant at Wulkuraka near Ipswich.
At full capacity the export-accredited plant can process up to 20,000 kangaroos per week, but like other processors its operations have been hit hard by the August 2009 closure of the large Russian market.
What made Russia such a valuable market, according to GMP’s general manager Rex Devantier, was not just the volume of product it took, but the type of product it took.
More than 70pc of a kangaroo carcase is better suited to manufacturing or trimming grade product than it is to primal cuts. While Australia can not meet the demand that exists for primal cuts such as kangaroo fillets, rumps, topsides and silversides, it is much harder to find buyers for the manufacturing grade meat.
“Hence the desirability of a market like Russia, which can take large volumes of meat destined for their small goods industry,” Mr Devantier said.
For GMP the sudden closure of the valuable Russian market in August last year resulted in the immediate loss of 40pc of its total market.
However GMP has fared better than many others, with its diversified market base providing a valuable buffer against the loss of the major market.
GMP has worked hard over the past 10 months to develop important new markets for its trimming grades and has had success in expanding exports to traditionally smaller customers of manufacturing product such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Canada and Czechoslovakia.
Mr Devantier said those markets now took about 50pc of the meat GMP had supplied to Russia.
Some industry players that were focused almost exclusively on supplying Russia closed their operations in the wake of the market closure last year and their operations are either still closed or significantly scaled back.
“One company in particular has three plants currently not operating, which would have processed exclusively for Russia,” Mr Devantier said.
“We as a business made a decision to continue to process and operate, and diversify into other alternative markets.
“This has not been without its challenges, however we believe that the diversification strategy has placed us in a far stronger position both currently and into the future.”
Mr Devantier said the GMP plant had spent more than $500,000 on upgrades to its cold chain in the wake of the Russian market closure and more than $200,000 in additional testing and monitoring processes that would be an ongoing cost ever year.
He said he was now confident the Australian industry was ready to satisfy Russian import protocols and said the industry was working hard through Government to re-establish trade.
He used a visit by Russia’s trade commissioner to Australia, Yuri Aleshin, on Wednesday to highlight the changes that have been made. Mr Aleshin visited the plant as part of a two-day showcase of Queensland agriculture organised by AgForce and the Australia-Russia Business Council.
“We were able to demonstrate to the Russian Trade Commissioner, with the assistance of Safefood Queensland personnel and AQIS representatives, some of the changes that have been made in both processing techniques and more importantly in the traceability and managing of the harvester cold chain,” Mr Devantier said.
“Via AQIS the industry has made an approach to the Russian authorities to demonstrate the changes that industry has undertaken to satisfy the concerns of the Russian customers.
“We believe our industry is ready to demonstrate our newfound capability.”
While the industry had received “positive feedback” via Government authorities to its re-entry approaches, it was yet to receive any formal response or indication of a possible market re-entry date.
“We await that with eagerness,” he said.
Mr Aleshin told Queensland Country Life following the visit that he was impressed with what he saw at GMP.
“As I understand it now you have established a new system, I saw some presentations that were very impressive. I am afraid it is very expensive,” he said.
“The appropriate agencies are having talks, good talks, and they are trying to eliminate all obstacles in this trade.”
As a trade commissioner Mr Aleshin is not the controlling authority on the food safety issue, however, a positive report from his office to the relevant Russian authorities would be seen as a positive step forward in the road back to re-entry, the vice-president of the Australia-Russia business council, Luke Fraser, said.
“I think we have got a really good case, and I haven’t detected any lack of good will from the Russian side,” Mr Fraser said.
“We have demonstrated a lot of good will, such as what you see here (at GMP), and I think we’re in a pretty good position soon to go forward with a case for re-entry.”
Mr Aleshin was also shown a demonstration of Radio Frequency Identification tags that are currently being trialled to replace the current paper-based tag and traceability system.
The RFID tags being trialled have been developed by BCDS Idenfification Technologies, Sydney, and are high frequency read/write tags. A small electronic box in the harvester’s vehicle programs information onto each tag including the sex and species of the kangaroo, and the date, time and precise GPS location of where it was harvested. That information would then follow the product from the paddock right the supply chain to its final destination in carton-form.
At present the tags are likely to cost about 60c each. The tags are currently being trialled by shooters in the paddock and through processing plants such as GMP. The trial finishes in late June and it will then be up to DEEDI to decide if the technology is ready to be rolled out across the entire industry.
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