THE privately owned, NSW-based, Sundown Pastoral Company is building the capacity to produce more than 70,000 head of finished steers and heifers annually as part of a 52-week-a-year supply chain - with help from commercial cattle breeders.
Sundown Pastoral Company has carved a place in the market over the past three years supplying stock from its own herd as well as trade cattle to key exporters and domestic supermarket chains.
During that time Sundown has worked toward consolidating its ability to produce finished cattle with now more than 15,000 hectares of highly improved pastures, while steadily dispersing its 15,000 cow herd.
Instead of tying up land with breeding cows Sundown director David Statham said this could be best achieved in alliance with some of Australia?s best commercial cattle breeders, securing a steady supply of weaned steers and heifers between 240kg and 320kg.
This, he said, would enable the Sundown team to focus on one of its key strengths: pasture production.
An aggregation of four properties between Kingstown and Inverell gives them more than 30,000 hectares of prime grazing land within a 75-kilometre radius.
"We're growing dairy quality pastures on a Queensland cattle station scale," he said.
Their alliance with commercial breeders will involve 35,000 cows with calving to be spread between Spring and Autumn.
This will provide them with half their annual supply of weaners while the other half will be come from trade markets. Sundown will aim to turn off grassfed Angus and Angus cross steers using in-paddock supplementary grain assisted production for the domestic and export sectors respectively, as well as grain-finished product.
To spread production across the 52 weeks of the year crossbred steers and heifers (Charolais, Santa Gertrudis and Hererford crosses) will also be used for supply the domestic and export markets.
Alliance members will benefit from the economies of scale Sundown can offer its domestic and export clients, who recognise the value of constant supply throughout the year.
Sundown will issue 60-day forward prices every fortnight to participating alliance members, which would show far less variation than the spot market.
"I'm used to forward contracts weeks and months out and that just doesn't generally exist in the beef game and that's something we'll be able to secure with our economies of scale," he said.
Quality assurance throughout the supply chain is another factor in plans and will help achieve better prices.
Using the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) electronic tags, Sundown will work with alliance-producers to collate data from marking-age onward for the processors and retailers (for added marketing leverage).
Should their steaks end up on an uptown dinner plate, which Mr Statham is confident they can, that restaurant will know what breed it is and what it was finished on.
Alliance producers will be offered premium market prices - and potentially some significant cost savings to their business - of up to 20c/kg liveweight. This could equate to an extra $50/head by minimising shrinkage and other costs incurred by selling through current selling methods.
Sundown will also have arrangements with some of the country's top studs to enable alliance members to lease bulls for a nominal price and will contribute $250 per bull of that fee.
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