WAAMCO CEO Coll MacRury

WESTERN Australia’s meat marketing Co-operative WAMMCO will pay its highest ever sheep meat rebate to members for 2017-18 – adding more than $11 a head to producers’ lamb returns.

At the Australian Wool Innovation GrandsLamb dinner at Lambex 2018 last night, WAMMCO group chief executive officer Coll MacRury said the company will pay a record 2017-18 rebate of $4.3 million.

“Which works out at about $11.11 lamb per head average and $6.66 a head on mutton, or 50 cents a kg on lamb and 25c/kg on mutton.

“That will be paid in the next seven days, so it’s been a great season and it’s great to pass that back to our real loyal members, who we are thankful for.”

The co-operative’s previous highest rebate was 40c/kg for qualifying lamb and 20c/kg for qualifying mutton, totalling $1.8m in 2013. The 2017-18 rebate is more than double that paid the previous year of 20c/kg for lamb and 10c/kg for sheep, equating to $2.25 million.

Mr MacRury said producers have to be a qualifying member of the co-operative to share in the rebate pool. There are about 1000 active qualifying members.

The WAMMCO CEO said the 2017-18 rebate made the total lamb price paid to members comparative to eastern state’s lamb prices.

“Absolutely, especially for an average weight lamb of 21-22kg carcase weight maximum.

“If you can boot that back from the east coast heavy weights, it’s a fantastic outcome,” he said.

“They (WAMMCO members) are probably averaging somewhere around 645c/kg over the whole year, which is unequalled in WA and would be more than competitive against the east.”

He said the rebate has been around similar levels before, but not in total money terms.

“We had a great year, but we are still going through the audit process and I will be announcing the financial results at the AGM at the end of October.”

Mr MacRury said the co-operative was focussed on value-adding.

“We’re not a big company needing to put big numbers through; we focus on what we can do with the animal and adding value.

“We’ve invested heavily in North America with the New Zealand companies, through the lamb co-operatives, and we actually have processing companies up there to try to add value in the market,” he said.

“That’s what’s giving us the ability to extract a little bit extra.”