Beef prices climb as supply contracts in key markets
With production volumes contracting in most major beef-producing regions, global cattle prices have continued to rise across recent months.
Many very large food companies, particularly in the US, are struggling to adjust to the changing tastes of consumers, says Nick Fereday, RaboResearch senior analyst consumer foods.
“There’s been a huge turnover of chief executives; a very dangerous job to be in right now is to run a big food company in the US. You are likely to be scalped, to have Wall St coming after you for not delivering in the quarter,” he told the Rabobank Farm2Fork conference in Sydney last month.
He cited Kraft Heinz as a case and gave some examples of that company’s latest ‘new’ products, which showed “little innovation and were not meeting consumer changes”.
Fereday says it is not just Kraft Heinz; large food companies spend very little on social research -- just 1%.
“They are much more interested in spending money on persuading you to buy their product than come up with innovative product and talk to the consumer.”
He says large companies that have succeeded for a long time, e.g. Kraft with brands 100 years old and Heinz now celebrating 150 years, have survived by being able to adapt to trends.
“Increasingly in the last five-six years they have become very ‘unstuck’ from what’s going on. That has left an opportunity for small companies who see opportunities and move,” Fereday said.
“The larger companies are struggling with a mind-set where they have been making, for instance, cornflakes forever so the solution is more cornflakes or better cornflakes and they can’t think beyond that and come unstuck.
“This is afflicting more the American companies than the European companies who have caught up and are beginning to change.”
Like many manufacturers around the world, European agricultural machinery and tractor manufacturers are currently operating in a difficult market environment. But they are heading to the world’s largest agricultural machinery event in Hanover next month with a degree of cautious optimism.
Established in 2021, the John Deere Technician of the Year Awards champion the important contribution parts and service technicians make to the Australian and New Zealand agriculture, construction and forestry industries.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) is calling on farmers from all regions to take part in the final season of the Sheep Poo Study aiming to build a clearer picture of how facial eczema (FE) affects farms across New Zealand.
New Zealand is closer to eradicating bovine TB than ever before, but possums remain a threat, says Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has joined the debate around the proposed sale of Fonterra’s consumer and related businesses, demanding answers from the co-operative around its milk supply deal with the buyer, Lactalis.
The ACT Party says media reports that global dairy giant Nestle has withdrawn from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance shows why New Zealand needs to rethink its approach to climate.
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