DESPITE the Australian dollar hovering around parity with the $US, Teys Bros executive director livestock Geoff Teys is confident beef prices will hold up and says there are enormous opportunities to export Australian beef around the world.
"Before the global financial crisis the world was talking about the need for soft commodities and now it is back," he said.
Speaking at the Southern Grassfed Carcase Classic presentation dinner in Naracoorte last month, he said he was very excited about the beef industry in the South East and with the $22 million expansion of their Naracoorte plant it would process 170,000 head of cattle for the year.
In the SE, Mr Teys said they were producing a high quality grassfed product under Meat Standards Australia and were nearly obtaining the same price for grassfed Angus beef as grain fed product.
This was enabling premiums in the order of 20 to 25 cents a kilogram carcaseweight over the normal MSA grid price to be passed back to Angus producers.
Mr Teys said Australia's two major beef export destinations, the United States and Japan, were still struggling but the company was pushing larger volumes into newer markets such as China and Russia, and had seen a resurgence from the European Union.
Teys is now exporting to about 45 markets around the world compared with 30 years ago when it had just four major markets.
He said the EU market would be a particular bright spot in the next 12 months if supply of quality grassfed and grain fed product could be guaranteed, especially with the EU beef stockpile depleted.
Australian beef was highly sought after in the premium market because of the tight quality specifications on dentition, meat colour and fat colour demanded by the market.
Unlike the EU's own domestic beef, Mr Teys said Australian beef was well aged by the time it got to consumers' plates.
"The longer you keep it in cryovac the better it eats and because it takes 10 to 12 weeks for the chilled product to get to the EU, when it arrives it is in pristine condition for the consumer. For their domestic kill they want to kill it today and eat it tomorrow," he said.
Australia's original quota to the EU was only 7500 tonnes of beef but he said there had been much larger volumes sent in under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade covering international trade of goods.
Mr Teys said there were huge opportunities to supply frozen product from 100-day grain fed cattle with Australia and the United States sharing a 20,000t quota which would increase to 44,000t within 18 months.
