CommBeef: learning every day

When you’re working to build new regional economic structures and supply chains, every day is a learning day.

Over the past 8 months or so, Sister City Partners has integrated a regional beef supply chain under a community ownership structure. For everyone involved, it has been a massive learning experience, but one that has already delivered important dividends for North Queensland by way of jobs, value-added and an example of how new models can work to deliver long-term resilience and community benefit.

The recent 3-page write-up in the Townsville Bulletin (18 May 2016) has given everyone involved a real boost ... thanks to Leanne Oliveri for her interest.

Farm to Fork

This integration has been undertaken through our CommBeef initiative, which has brought under one structure grazing properties, feed producers, our own abattoir with capacity to shift into export markets, an export-accredited processing and packaging plant and a direct to the public retail butcher store (pictured below).

It is driven each and everyday by SCP’s Director Mark Dunworth, who I’m sure wonders periodically why it is that he came out of semi-retirement to take on such responsibilities! In time, the region will I hope (and believe) recognise him for this work. 

Allow me a small plug: The community butcher store is at 147 Boundary Street, Railway Estate and is open 6 days a week. When you support your local “from paddock to plate” community butcher, you can be confident that you’re supporting the work of people in our processing plant, our feed producers, our abattoir workers and the graziers on the land.

An online store will be available in the not too distant future, which means you can pre-buy and collect. We may even offer a deliver service, if that’s what our customers want. I guess we’ll learn these things as we go, but in the meantime, I’d like to share with you some of the other lessons we’ve already taken on board.

Lesson #1 Quality matters

For too long, locally produced meat and meat products were seen (often by those selling it) to be “cheap”. Certainly, when compared against the marketing and branding success stories of beef from King Island or Cape Grim, locally produced beef had progressively been positioned as a lower cost / lesser quality option. Indeed, the impression that had emerged in our discussions with local consumers - whether they be householders or restauranteurs - is that locally grown and produced beef was inconsistent at best, and consistently poor at worse.

Bad reputations are easily gained, and good ones quickly tarnished. In this context, one of CommBeef’s first challenges was to focus our integrated supply chain on the need to achieve consistency of quality and high standards. We’ve progressively achieved this through communicating with our graziers, leading by example with our own cattle, and working hard to instil confidence and pride amongst everyone involved that we can be proud of what we grow and make here in our own backyards.

We’ve also had to listen intently to what our customers (and hoped-for) customers were saying. On the question of quality the message was loud and clear: consistency and integrity of product were cornerstones of what counted as quality. We’re proud to say that local beef is earning its way back to the tables of our region’s homes and  restaurants - not as second grade, cheap meat, but as high quality meat that we can all be proud of.

We're far from perfect; and so customers from time to time have been disappointed. And when they are, we are too. We value their feedback because it allows us to strengthen the work practices, the model and the passion of the entire team to strive for excellence. Mistakes are inevitable; our aim is to ensure we don't keep repeating them. A complex change process invariably means we have to be mindful of these hiccups along the way.

Where are we heading with this? The short answer is: within 2 years (and perhaps sooner), we’d like to think that the vast majority of discerning local consumers will - when given their druthers - consciously and deliberately insist on the local Northern Beef than anything else … even if they are paying a little bit more for it!

Lesson #2 Why community focus matters

We realised early on in our work that we are custodians of a proud tradition. This tradition goes back to the independent, pioneering spirit of the North’s community in times past. Indeed, we learned through our travels that the cattle that is considered as “low” quality today was at one time viewed as amongst some of the best table cattle in the land.

We had to rekindle this sense of community value and pride, which had been decimated by industrial-scale supply chains that have, over the last 40 years, seen two retailing majors grow their market share from 35% to a dominant position of 80%+.

Our custodianship sees us operating the Giru abattoir (pictured above; that's Mark out the front), which has been a part of the regional economic landscape for over four generations. Indeed, CommBeef’s abattoir manager is a second-generation face around the facility; he used to run amok there years ago as a lad after school, when his own father was the manager. It is a small world indeed, and reinforces the power of community, our shared heritage and responsibilities.

Working with graziers across our region also opens us up to the communities of the past. We’ve learned from them about the resilience of the North Queensland ethos, and an age-old willingness to pass on wisdom from one generation to another. Of course, this is no longer happening the way it used to on the land, when one generation took over from where the previous one left off. Younger people aren’t so keen to work the land like their forebears did; the lure of work and opportunities in cities is simply too strong for most. 

These dynamics leave exposed the region to economic and social transformations that can radically alter the structure of the place and the balance of economic forces for ever. As grazing families age, and near retirement, there are few options for “exit” other than to sell down the farm. Corporate or industrial-scale agribusiness is the consequence.

Now, these forces are powerful and we can’t totally avoid them. Rather, what CommBeef is beginning to do is occupy what some have called the “agriculture of the middle”, which provides outlets for farmers whose operations are of a scale that aren’t entirely suited to the interests of industrial agribusiness. At this “middle scale”, we provide those throughout the supply chain with what accountants would call “succession opportunities” - namely, a pathway whereby they can transition to retirement while maintaining an ongoing connection with their land and their work. This way, we are able to benefit from the transfer of wisdom and knowledge and sustain a community of interest across the generations.

Lesson #3 Value adding now, and for the future

We’ve learned the importance of growing local value adding to drive jobs growth now and into the future. Each additional thing we do throughout the chain adds value and creates jobs. The jobs we create are skilled and increasingly underpinned by creativity and imagination. Our food technology team “design” new products and flavours; they work with local graphic designers to create visually exciting packaging that the entire region can be proud of. If we believe our product is exceptional, then how we show the world matters.

Since August last year, Sister City Partners through its CommBeef initiative has stabilised the employment of over 40 people directly in the supply chain and numerous additional jobs have been supported indirectly through our business interactions. Local graphic designers, IT folk, quality systems analysts and agronomists are some of the high-tech skills that we’ve drawn upon and supported.

As for the core business of meat, CommBeef continues to expand the community of jerky lovers not only in the region, but throughout Australia and elsewhere in the world. That's our new packaging, soon to hit the shelves.

Last year, I took some of our jerky to a colleague in China, as a gift. He came back and visited Brisbane in late December and the first thing he wanted to do was go to the supermarket to buy some CommBeef jerky. I had to tell him that our jerky isn’t to be found on the shelves of the major retailers; so he abandoned the supermarket trip. “I only want your jerky,” he said.

Samples have now been despatched to Hong Kong to satiate his personal desires … and you never know where that may take North Queensland's own beef jerky in the Middle Kingdom.

But it’s not just jerky that’s gaining followers. Our Italian sausages are apparently so good now that many in the regional italian community are more than happy to eat CommBeef sausages rather than make their own. Now, I must admit that we had an unfair advantage: one of our core team member’s nona let us in on some Sicilian secrets that came from her forebears some 100+ years earlier.

When we transform raw materials into products of use for our community, we at the same time create jobs of purpose, significance and meaning. The export of live cattle, by way of contrast, misses out on these local virtues. How long the social license in our country continues for live cattle exports is a major question; and, so, from a regional resilience perspective, having building blocks in place for local value-adding makes a lot of sense.

Lesson #4 New thinking is needed

The integrated supply chain enables the management of business risks, for all concerned. This approach to economic rebuilding of the region has been critical to our focus on how to transform the North’s economic situation, which has in recent times progressively gone backwards. We know that the “business as usual” approaches of “waiting for the government” isn’t going to cut it anymore. New ways of building resilient economies are needed, and building stronger, tighter local supply chains is one of these new ways.

Our work is a continual learning process. The models we have developed are continually being refined as we take on board the lessons of changing circumstances and experiences. Because CommBeef is for us a example of regional resilience-through-learning, we’re spending a lot of time talking with graziers about how to improve the breeding herd; we’re talking with farmers about opportunities to diversify and strengthen their own family farm businesses; and we’re looking at new ways to bring science and modern technologies to bear on how every aspect of the integrated supply chain can be improved.

The strength achieved through integration also enables us to deal confidently with export markets. We’ve been sending our product to Japan and Papua New Guinea - and more recently to Hong Kong. We’re regularly field inquiries now from Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and the Pacific islands. Chinese importers have also been knocking on the door. This has been the value of new thinking, which seeks to rekindle and harness the power of mutuality in supply chains and build out from the infrastructure and fabric of our region.

*The Main Image: local CommBeef beef seared and served with Achacha. Created by Matt Merrin at Jam. 

(c) 2016 Warwick Powell