Silver Fern Farms (SFF) chief executive Simon Limmer writes in the company’s 2020 annual report that global beef production is forecast to grow 0.8%, led by 1% growth in the US, as breeding cattle numbers have stabilised, but Australian production will be back 14%.
Limmer says while Australian farmers are still rebuilding their herds after a multi-year drought event, four beef plants have lost market access to China.
South American beef production has been impacted by plant restrictions preventing access to China and the impact of covid-19.
SFF had a marked increase in stock supplied direct, which Limmer says saved about $600,000 in third-party fees.
He says the company’s market-led programmes continue to grow.
“In 2020 beef programmes grew by 17% and our lamb programme grew by 4%, and is nearing 10% of our total lamb supply,” Limmer said.
“Given the market conditions, this was an excellent result.”
SFF co-op chair Richard Young announced plans to standardise the share structure to reduce the annual $50,000 administration cost.
“There is a considerable cost in servicing the over 11,600 holders of rebate shares who have fewer than 1000 shares in their co-operative,” Young said.
He says just 370 of those shareholders supplied livestock in 2020.
Interest in supplying SFF continues to grow with 158 new shareholders in 2020, of which 76% were active farmers with an existing supply relationship.
Earlier this year, SFF Co-op announced a net profit before tax of $32.4m for the year to December 31, 2020, it was debt free, has $22.3m cash on hand and shareholder equity of $327m.
During the year under review SFF Ltd, the trading arm, reported revenue of $2.5 billion ($2.6b in 2019), Ebitda of $125.7m ($124.3m), net profit before tax of $65.4m ($70.7m) and dividends paid of $26.5m ($1.7m).
The dividend represented 40% of SFF Ltd’s net profit after tax, which was evenly shared by the two shareholders, SFF Co-op and Shanghai Maling Aquarius.
Two Shanghai Maling appointees to the board of SFF Ltd, co-chair Mr Wang and director Ms Tang, retired and were replaced by Jian Wu as co-chair and Yan Juan Xu as a director.
