| 31 AGRICULTURE Silver Fern Hawera T T Hugh de Lacy Silver Fern Hawera poised for growth During the main season the plant operates both day and evening shifts. Booming global demand for beef has come just in time to maximise the benefits from recent capital and maintenance investment in Silver Fern Farms’ Hawera beef-processing plant, promising to help turn around the parent company’s losses of the last two years. Upheaval in the global beef market, following United States President Donald Trump’s back-and-forth on global tariffs, incidentally promises to boost demand for beef world-wide, delivering an immediate fillip to the Hawera plant. The plant employs up to 650 people at season’s peak from October to July, processing whole carcasses into consumer-ready cuts that Silver Fern Farms exports to more than a hundred countries world-wide. The parent company recorded a record profit of $190m in 2022, helping off-set losses of about $20m in 2023 and 2024, and allowing for significant upgrade spending at Hawera. During that period $3m was spent on repairs and maintenance and a further $4m on capital upgrades that included the installation of the country’s first robotic knife-sharpening machine. That technology has since been rolled out to most of the company’s 14 sites nationwide and has resulted in a startling 25% drop in injuries such as sprains in Hawera, a significant improvement for the plant that was first set up as a pig-processor in 1942. New guardian band-saws also contributed to the improved safety record at Hawera. During the main season the plant operates both day and evening shifts, the day-shift hours varying between 5.30am and 4pm, while the evening shift runs between 4pm and 1.30am. As well as attractive pay rates, staff are attracted by the range of entry-level positions across all processing departments, and get training and support along with the advantages of an Employee Benefit Programme and meat sales at discounted rates. Last year’s losses at the Hawera plant, a regular winner of the parent company’s Plant of the Year Award, and elsewhere, were caused by historically low livestock flows, creating a deficit that the company swallowed rather than cut payments to farmers. Silver Fern Farms’ total revenue was down 5% as a result, to $2.6 billion. The company processes 30% of the country’s entire beef, lamb and venison production, and employs 6000 people nationwide at season’s peak. After being launched in the middle of World War Two to process pork, the Hawera plant went through successive changes of ownership, converted to a beef-only operation by Richmond Meats in 1998. It was acquired by the then Primary Producers Co-operative Society (PPCS) which in 2008 re-branded itself as Silver Fern Farms. The company’s chief executive, Dan Boulton, was reported as saying things are looking bright for both the Chinese and American markets, while demand – and prices – from the European Union were going “from strength to strength. ”Last year’s farmgate returns were up between 25% and 30%, comfortably above the five-year average, and he was expecting livestock flows to return to normal in 2025. “We’re looking at record farmgate returns today, and near-record market pricing,” Dan says, ensuring a favourable outlook for the Hawera plant. TRANSPORT, STORAGE & DISTRIBUTION 0800 502 332 www.jdhickman.co.nz Trusted Supply Chain Partner for Silver Fern Farms Hawera
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