TRACING a steak’s origins can be a difficult task, but if you are eating a cut of beef from Amelia Park you can be sure it has come from a farm in Borden via a processor in Bunbury and through a butcher in Jandakot.
The Amelia Park brand is gaining traction in the Western Australian market thanks to a deal between Ryan’s Quality Meat owners Greg Ryan and Karl Osterberg, Bunbury-based processor V&V Walsh, and Borden farmer Paul O’Meehan.
It’s a paddock-to-plate operation driven by a passion to produce and supply quality meat.
As V&V Walsh export manager Paul Crane put it, the partnership came out of a “pursuit of excellence”.
Three years ago, as Mr Ryan sought to develop his own exclusive beef brand, he came in contact with V&V Walsh, an abattoir operation on the outskirts of Bunbury established in 1957.
V&V Walsh liked the idea and took the business under its Amelia Park brand – Amelia Park Estate being the horse adjistment and recreation property chief executive Peter Walsh bought from his parent in 2002.
The Amelia Park label now includes lamb, beef and wine.
Amelia Park beef took off quickly and Ryan’s Quality Meats was soon selling 80 bodies of beef a week – a sizable number for a small business.
But when beef prices rose in late 2010 and quality fell-off due to high demand, Mr Ryan moved to lower his output to 50 bodies weekly.
He had identified a consistently high-quality group of 50 calves coming through each week and contacted Mr Crane to figure out where they were coming from.
Enter Paul O’Meehan, a Borden cattle farmer whose family has been in the business and on the farm for 106 years.
“There is no guessing where the cattle are coming from now, there are 50 coming from Paul’s place every week; rain, hail or shine, Christmas, Easter you name it, they will turn up and they will be to spec every time,” Mr Ryan said.
All parties consider the agreement a ‘winning’ deal.
With 95 per cent of his business in wholesale supply, Mr Ryan has found a reliable source of quality meat to take to to Perth’s top restaurants, including Nic Trimboli’s Balthazar and Brent Pollard’s Mosmans Restaurant.
V&V Walsh, which also processes meat for Woolworths supermarkets, wins because the deal furthers the reputation of its Amelia Park brand.
And Mr O’Meehan is a winner, because he has assured demand for his stock.
“From my perspective, the consistency of supply is critical,” Mr O’Meehan told WA Business News.
“Sometimes you feel you could go to the market with critical mass by churning out some average stuff, but I just couldn’t do that. Every time that truck goes out you want to hang your hat on it and say, ‘another bloody spot-on load of Amelia Park’.”
Mr O’Meehan’s strategy for growing quality beef year-round is centred on grain feeding the cattle, and it’s a program that suits the requirements of V&V Walsh.
“Traditionally the highlight of the year was using spring beef. As a butcher we always used to look forward to that. With what we are doing with Paul, we are basically getting spring beef 52 weeks of the year,” Mr Crane said.
Messrs Ryan and Osterberg’s decision to scale back the output of beef in 2010 to focus on quality has some elements of short-term pain for long-term gain.
“Karl and I have made a really conscious decision to support quality WA produce, and it is hard for WA butchers to do that; there is a lot of cheaper eastern states meat that comes into the state,” Mr Ryan said.
“We are approximately $150,000 to $200,000 a year behind financially because of the cost involved in producing what we are putting out to market.
‘‘If we started to go all carton stock from over east and not worry about consistency, we would be in front by that much each year.
“But we know there aren’t going to be too many people, if any, doing it like we are doing it in five to six years’ time.”
This is a partnership based on quality, but all three links in the chain don’t want that to be to the detriment of quantity.
“Critical mass being lost is no good for my business, Paul’s or Greg’s. It’s all about volume,” Mr O’Meehan said.
‘‘We are talking about quality here, but you have to get a certain amount of quantity through to make it all work.”
Mr Ryan said the plan for his business was to slowly build the supply of beef in a similar way that lamb supply grew.
“We were doing 40 lambs a week initially and now some weeks we are doing 250 lambs,” he said.
That will take time, in order to maintain quality.
“When we put a product out there, whether it is to Balthazar or a lunch bar, we want to know they are getting what they want – a consistent product that meets the mark every time. I don’t want to get a phone call at 9 o’clock at night from a chef saying ‘what have you sent me?’,” Mr Ryan said.