End of an era as Enright leaves LiveCorp

He was replaced by Troy Setter, chief executive officer of Consolidated Pastoral Company, at the annual LIVEXchange conference at Townsville, Queensland, in October.

Mr Enright, now living in Geraldton, joined LiveCorp in 2010 as a board member and spent the past two years as chairman after being elected for three consecutive terms.

In an exclusive interview with Farm Weekly, Mr Enright said his interest in being a part of the live export trade's peak R&D body stemmed from his 40 years of farming, wherein his sheep enterprise was focussed on supporting the live sheep trade out of Western Australia.

The Enrights operated three enterprises - sheep, cattle and cropping at Mt Barker - before leasing out the farm in recent years and selling up in 2018.

"We were quite focused on sheep for the live export trade," Mr Enright said.

"We relied on live sheep exports for a substantial part of our business for many years.

"My interest in live export was via the fact that we had been so dependent on them, so it is an important industry."

Mr Enright said he couldn't provide specific numbers that he supplied to the trade per year as each year varied, but it was in the thousands and "had been for many years".

"If you look at the industry more broadly its a very important $1.6 billion industry, with an estimated 14,000-20,000 jobs depending on it," Mr Enright said.

"Particularly the northern cattle area - it is absolutely vital for them.

"Live exports is an important industry and it was good to be part of it."

Mr Enright joined LiveCorp "just a few months before the 2011 suspension of trade to Indonesia".

"The biggest consequence to that was the introduction of the Exporters' Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS) to all species and all markets," he said.

"The introduction of that was an incredibly challenging exercise for the industry.

"I think it is testament to the exporters particularly who had to put that in place in their supply chains.

"If you look at it now, nine years later, we are exporting 2.5 million animals and it is still a very viable and important industry - we have made it work.

"It was a big investment by them to get that ESCAS in place and monitor it and I think the role LiveCorp played in that has been pretty significant in assisting the development of that and getting those programs in place."

LiveCorp's role was to help design some of ESCAS, as well as provide policy advice to the Independent Regulator (the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources).

"More importantly we provided a lot of assistance, together with Meat and Livestock Australia through the Livestock Export Program (LEP), to train people in the implementation of ESCAS and how it works," he said.

"The training aspect of that and putting the programs in place in the importing countries was a big piece of our work."

Mr Enright said one of the highlights of his career was working on the ground in the Middle East during its busiest time of year, which he did for three years during 2013-2015.

"I didn't do a lot of travel at a board level but I did do a certain amount of travel into those markets in Indonesia, as well as the Middle East with the live sheep trade," he said.

"I volunteered to work in the yards in Kuwait City during Eid al-Adha (Festival of the Sacrifice) assisting in managing Australian sheep in those markets during the festival.

"It is a time of huge demand.

"Everything goes along normally through the abattoir system the rest of the year but during that Festival of the Sacrifice everyone wants to come and buy an animal and have it processed - because it is part of their religious festival.

"It's a whole level of activity that people would have no understanding of unless you had seen it.

"Our job, assisting the importers and exporters, was to make sure that Australian sheep were handled in an appropriate way through the approved supply chain.

"The important point to make is how much change there has been in those markets."

Mr Enright said the "highlight of my time was visiting the Middle East and understanding the market".

"I'd been supplying sheep to live exporters for 40 years and really you don't have a great understanding of where the whole system goes," he said.

"They get sold and they get exported, but understanding the complexity of the markets - they are all different.

"In the Middle East there's six or seven different countries and they all have different issues, customs and requirements.

"Understanding those fundamental differences and some of the logistical difficulties of working in those environments, such as how hot it is and the level of activity around Eid al-Adha is astounding.

"There could be 20,000 indigenous sheep on the side of the road throughout Kuwait City (during the festival) and just the level of activity and understanding that, was a highlight."

Mr Enright said experiencing Indonesian cattle feedlots and understanding the scale of the trade there and the importance of it to the people was another highlight.

"The highlight was just seeing how important it is to them - to food security and their system," he said.

"And another thing to understand is that in all those markets there is boxed product as well - so it's not one or the other it's a combination.

"There is a demand for live animals for a raft of reasons."

Mr Enright said after footage came to light of animals being badly handled, changes had taken place, especially in the Middle East because of their reliance on consistent quality sheep.

He said the LEP program had provided a lot of advice into the market and assisted in how they managed sheep and addressed some of the welfare issues previously experienced.

"Even from things as basic as shade over pens and provisions of more efficient watering systems," Mr Enright said.

He said a lot of credit needed to be given to the importers for the changes they introduced, with the support of the exporters and the live export industry more generally providing advice to help.

"That has totally changed the whole system, even in the three years that I was there," he said.

"I haven't been back in the past couple of years but obviously people have and whereas people had some sheep outside of the system they are now very well controlled and that has been a big change."

Mr Enright said there had been "significant input by Australia into the design" of Kuwait Livestock Transport and Trading's (KLTT) new abattoir, processing facility and feedlot that had been established in Kuwait.

"KLTT financed and built the $70 million closed-loop abattoir in Kuwait, which was a big investment,'' he said.

"More lately we have had the Awassi Express incident and the fall out from that, which dominated my last two years as chair.

"We put a lot of resources into the sheep trade because - even though the cattle trade is financially a lot bigger market - it is important that the sheep trade be preserved, particularly from WA's perspective.

"We put a lot of energy into responding to reviews such as the McCarthy Review, the Moss Review, the Heat Stress Risk Assessment Review - all these various reviews were really reviewing the regulatory environment around the export.

"So input into that is important because the only lever governments have is regulation.

"If there's problems they will tend to regulate, which is understood by the industry, but what we need is regulation that is effective and efficient.

"LiveCorp as an organisation is well placed to provide that economic analysis and input to that."

Looking back on his time at LiveCorp Mr Enright said there was "a lot of things you could say could have been done differently, but generally I think I'm happy at the end of the period I was there".

"This industry has been under severe challenge both from a political and a regulatory point of view as well as socially," he said.

"The fact that we have been able to provide useful input to the point where, if you look at the annual report, we are still a very viable industry after all that.

"I think that is an achievement.

"With all the bits and pieces that have gone on with that we are still exporting and importantly, we are getting very good results - the past few ships arrived with 99.8pc success rate which is very high."

Mr Enright said LiveCorp had to be careful not to overstep its mandate as a service organisation to the industry, although it could have pushed for a more "co-ordinated approach across the industry" in dealing with the issues.

"Maybe LiveCorp could have been a bit more upfront with that, but we have to be careful because we are a service organisation," he said.

"We have to take account of what the Australian Livestock Exporters' Council - representing the exporters - says, so its a balancing act.

"Maybe we could have been a bit more aggressive in some of those areas to head off problems before they arose but I think generally we have responded well."

Mr Enright said LiveCorp spent a lot of its time looking at market access issues because health protocols across the countries were all different and they could be quite restrictive at times.

"I don't see that lessening," he said.

"I think there'll be continuing work on that.

"At a consumer level - they have a very active interest in where food comes from, how its been handled and grown and transported and all that.

"All the trends indicate that that will continue."