Elevating prime lamb to capture premium markets

Tom and Phoebe Bull and children at Kinross Station, Holbrook, New South Wales - from Rare Medium online

Tom Bull has a fairly simple strategy that has driven the success and long-term sustainability of the family’s prime lamb operation for more than 20 years at Holbrook in New South Wales: “identify and multiply”.

The business, Lambpro, identifies sires and ewes from Australia and New Zealand with the ability to produce more kilograms of premium, eating-quality lamb per hectare, and multiplies their genes using artificial insemination, embryo transfer and natural mating.

Over a 12 months period, Lambpro joined more than 12,000 performance-tested ewes and sold 3,500 rams to producers from northern NSW and Victoria down to Tasmania and across into South Australia.

Its highly marbled Kinross Station Hampshire Down product retails for more than $100/kg in a number of global markets.

Mr Bull says there are three drivers of production of lamb per hectare – stocking rate, lambing percentage and turnoff weight - and successful lamb operations achieve a balance of all these components to maximise profitability.

“Most of our clients maximise the growth rate of all lambs through breeding and nutrition and then use grain finishing to enhance meat quality and take lambs from 40-plus kilograms to 65kg live weight,” he said.

“This allows lambs to be taken out of the pasture system and producers to run the maximum amount of ewes.”

He also looks to emulate beef brands like Angus and Wagyu and their “exceptional job” of aligning breeding, finishing and brand development.

“The high-end lamb market is still relatively immature, and it’s targeted at a small, affluent demographic within the global meat market, more tailored to entertaining, food service, or high earners.

“Once we see high-end, branded lamb products in the mainstream marketplace, you'll see a catalyst for change like we saw in beef, and plenty of people will start to control genetics and feed to produce large amounts of lambs. We’re positioning our clients for that to happen by 2030.”

Lambpro has five different breeding programs and Tom Bull says In order to supply a high quality and consistent product year-round it requires a large amount of data combined with a “customer mindset”.

“There has been real progress in Australian processing plants to measure lamb’s eating quality as indicated by marbling (intramuscular fat or IMF) and tenderness, and this data is collected on every kill and passed back to clients,” Mr Bull said.

“MLA also produced some really good data looking at IMF, linking that to MSA Score and then linking it to the data on consumers’ willingness to pay for a premium eating experience.

“The butcher shops we deal with in Sydney stock 10 beef products that retail for more than $100 a kilo, but there's no lamb in Sydney over $70. Why is that? Why can't we have $140 a kilo cutlets?

“Personally, I’m always happy to pay more for a great eating experience.”

Lambpro’s highly marbled Hampshire Down product, marketed under the Kinross Station prefix, currently dominates Meat and Livestock Australia’s national rankings for IMF.