Friday, March 29, 2024

Venison looks to the future

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Venison got savaged by covid but that has failed to sap deer industry confidence. At the annual conference of Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) chair Ian Walker acknowledged the challenging year, but says the industry will come back stronger for it.
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“It’s hellishingly frustrating to be a producer of one of the world’s most healthy and delicious proteins and to lose nearly all your top-end customers overnight,” Walker said.

“It’s never happened before, not for NZ food producers anyway.”

There have been market setbacks in the past, but after each of these the industry has bounced back stronger with a better spread of markets, better structures to assist production of venison and velvet and pathways to restore profitability.

“I believe our industry has the resilience, the structures and the people needed to bounce back from this current setback,” he said.

Walker says the future of farm-raised venison is bright, new markets are emerging, the foodservice will rebound and value will be reclaimed.

DINZ together with the venison marketers focused the industry’s market development energies on North America.

Passion-2-Profit (P2P) market development funding for 2021-22, matched dollar for dollar by marketers, is targeting the North American retail sector with an investment of almost $1 million a year.

NZ marketers identified a big opportunity in a growing preference for venison and also in meats produced on farms practicing regenerative agriculture.

Mountain River Venison marketing manager John Sadler says meeting the expectations of regenerative agriculture is not an issue for most of the company’s farmer suppliers.

“They’re already doing it,” Sadler said.

He outlined Mountain River’s new relationship with Force of Nature, a start-up US business targeting a market that wants to know where its meat is coming from and how it is grown.

A market that favours regenerative agriculture.

“At the moment we are doing three products with them; venison steaks and two ground products – elk ground and a venison-beef ground mix,” he said.

Alliance Group’s Terry O’Connell says ground venison ticks all the boxes.

“It moves A, B and C-grade trim, boneless shank and neck, more than 40% of the carcase, away from the European frozen commodity trade and up the value chain,” he said.

Alliance is targeting 20% of customers who are already buying ground bison, the biggest selling game product in US grocery, with sales up to $US300 million.

“Consumers must have a good experience when they try a new product, so ground venison is a safe entry point into retail,” O’Connell said.

“It’s a flexible product with a very low risk of failure.”

First Light Foods has identified the outdoor enthusiast market.

First Light venison marketing manager Matt Gibson says there is a new focus among a sizeable group of US consumers on eating healthy game meat.

The TV conservationist-hunter Joe Rogan has played a huge part in creating this cultural shift.

“A lot of people in the US are primed for venison, they want venison, they fancy themselves as hunters,” Gibson said.

“The reality is they are urbanites, part of a venison starved audience, something I find very exciting.”

Duncan NZ’s Robb Kidd says the company has looked at a new normal in its strategies going forward.

The US and the EU are ticking along but both markets are nervous.

Peter Robinson of Silver Fern Farms (SFF) says adversity is an opportunity in disguise.

SFF set up what they dubbed the Red Team that worked on a project to deal with immediate problems and to create long-term solutions to the industry’s reliance on food service.

Robinson says the company’s one-pound ground venison burger launched into US retail stores has become the biggest selling venison item in US grocery, assuring access to shelf space and opportunity to negotiate space for other venison items.

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