The State and Federal Governments will cost share a $24.7m barge to help flood affected north-east producers, providing a key pipeline for cattle procurement. Thomas Foods International national livestock manager Paul Leonard welcomed the initiative. Video by Paula Thompson.
00:00Well, very important and it was very much welcomed by Thomas that the Government has shown this initiative to invest in the barge to allow access of cattle from the birdsville tracks and surrounding areas to allow not only ourselves at Murray Bridge but I guess other processes in South Australia to have the opportunity to be able to procure livestock from that very important region in that late winter spring, early summer period that without this initiative we wouldn't have been able to
00:29meet had we had to truck those cattle if you like all the way through to Queensland back down through to New South Wales and then South Australia would have made us competitive and of course it's also added value to the pastoralist primary producers in that area that it gives them the option to consider the southern markets and I think you know currently obviously this time of the option the southern markets are more buoyant as we're in that period of the year where you know I think it's the lower of our supply of cattle
00:59so that the southern markets are playing an important role at that time of the year in providing competition for those producers and then secondly obviously from our perspective as processors you know we require cattle to keep the wheels of our business turning and inevitably be able to have a consistent supply of quality Australian beef to our global and domestic consumers.
01:24So it's a great initiative and we thank the government for doing this in a timely fashion.
01:31And particularly important for servicing that organic market as well?
01:33Yeah well absolutely I mean that it is one of the largest organic beef producing area in the world and there's great demand we have great demand particularly out of North America for Australian organic certified organic beef.
01:50So yes it's very important if we had to have been able to get access to those cattle through this late winter spring we wouldn't have been able to serve those in consistency to those customers of which could be accustomed to doing in the past.
