Cover Report
The Good News: Vanuatu Beef Beefing Up Exports
It's just cracked Australia's organic market
It's some of the best news to emerge from Vanuatu for a long time and could beef exports up by quite a few million more dollars.
The country's small but important cattle industry has just cracked the organic beef market in Australia.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
It's an important breakthrough since beef exports of up to 1500 tons a year are one of only six major domestic export items listed by the Reserve Bank of Vanuatu.
Last year, beef accounted for about US$1.42 million out of total exports, including copra, coconut oil, kava, cocoa and timber of about US$22 million.
 |
|
|
At the 70 percent government-owned abattoir of Vanuatu Abattoirs Limited in Port Vila, general manager Janette James says: "With the way the world is, organic has to be the future. There is tremendous potential as long as we don't get interfered with by external factors like shipping."
The company has begun monthly container shipments of "organic" beef to a Queensland buyer, beginning with one or two, and intending to work this up.
Three containers amounting to about 13,000 to 14,000 kilogrammes of the meat fetches 5 million Vatu (about US$37,000).
One farm, Robert Bohn's near the abattoir, has been certified as "organic" and three or four are moving towards a status that is checked annually by an independent auditor.
What's an organic cattle property? One that for two years is certified to have been free of all chemical pasture inputs, pesticides, and artificial growth stimulants.
Organic beef fetches premium prices.
James says since what Vanuatu can produce in a year is what one Australian company produces in a week, Vanuatu slips comfortably into a niche without the risk of being assaulted as a foreign competition.
What opened up the market is not just quality but the arrival at last of reliable frequent shipping links. The prior absence of these has stifled exports.
Vanuatu's cattle business has for years produced quality beef certified internationally as originating from an exceptionally disease-free environment.
At Santo, Gary Young, who runs an abattoir and meat export business for a Japanese company, Nitchiku, says: "In Australia, cattle have cysts at the rate of one in every three livers. In Vanuatu, there are hardly any. It's very clean. Quality is as good as Australian beef and it tastes a little bit better."
Vanuatu has just won Australian recognition as being free of BSE (mad cow disease) and is awaiting clearance by New Zealand.
Coupled with the opening of the organic era all this places the cattle business in an interesting position.
There's a problem, however. There's not enough cattle and there is some controversy over the opening of live cattle shipments to Indonesia by Edgewater Holdings Ltd, an Australian company, which in November 2001 took over an 8000-hectare cattle spread at Santo which another Australia investor failed to make a go of.
Edgewater's Mark O'Brian says that 2130 cattle went to Indonesia in March 2002 and between 3600 and 4000 more will be exported this month (May). The Philippines is another market the company is aiming for.
Young says he's slaughtering only three days a week and killing 400 a month. He'd prefer to be killing 800 to 900 heads a month.
"We used to ship six to eight containers a month to Japan. Now they are happy to get three."
O'Brian says the limited local and export market to small traditional buyers like Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Fiji and Tuvalu means that live cattle shipments are an economic necessity.
Some smaller cattle raisers agree. Janette James doesn't. She's all for "value added".
New Zealander Peter Colmar, a Vanuatu resident since 1971, runs about 12,000 cattle on four cattle and coconut properties on Santo, Pentecost, Aore and Efate.
He reckons that a lot of cattle are not up to export standard and that the national herd has dipped by 20 to 30 percent in the last 10 years. There are conflicting figures for the present total.
The Vanuatu Government had declared 2003 to be the Year of Livestock, intended to raise numbers from 140,000 to 175,000 cattle in the next five years, and to 200,000 in 10 years.
Colmar says live cattle exports should be limited to periods such as droughts.
He reckons the future for Vanuatu beef really lies in Europe. The Port Vila abattoir is too old and small, he says, and should be replaced by a Santo-located one built to demanding European health requirements at a cost of about US$1.5 million with European Union aid funds.
"We have to get more money for our meat and with a modern facility, we'd get 50 to 70 cents more a kilo.
"Vanuatu would have unrestricted access to Europe. We could export as much as we want. There's no quota."
