Welcome to the June bull sale 2023
After a successful trip to the USA scouting for future sires, I was excited with the cattle we saw. The strength of this trip is heightened by the experience of Guy Sargent, the 30 years of him travelling to the USA and the contacts he has made.
We made our annual visit to American Angus and met with CEO Mark McCully, where we had great discussions about where they are taking the breed and the association. There are some very exciting initiatives that are going to benefit Angus cattle in a big way.
One night was spent with John Stika, the president of Certified Angus Beef (CAB) and 30 top chefs from around the country, which was part of a week-long educational programme to promote the CAB brand — the largest beef programme in the USA, selling 550 million kg of beef nationally and around the world!
We were also lucky enough to visit Meats by Linz, which is a distribution outlet for all the high-end restaurants turning over $260 million USD.
Out of all of these meetings, it was very clear that if we want to compete with high-end niche markets, we must keep pushing for carcass quality, to enrich the eating experience for our customers. We can not rely on the reputation of grass-fed beef alone. At every meeting we had with distributors, they would say, “That's great, but what does it taste like?” We will never compete unless we create a consistent product.
At Kakahu we are in a strong position to actively help improve the cattle quality for our clients.
With the use of American, Australian and New Zealand genetics we are in the unique position to have a product that is highly sought after by our customers. Kakahu has always been open to finding the best genetics that can satisfy the market anywhere around the world, without compromising our core values in breeding.
The real reason we invest in our trips to the USA is to see the bulls that we want to use for ourselves. We’re also able to see their offspring as we visit sales along the journey — these studs are selling between 400-600 bulls in each sale!
The bulls are placed in their sire groups which gives us a very good view of how they are breeding. As a business, this type of research is incredibly valuable to us.
I'm in my 15th year of being home at Kakahu and I can very confidently tell you our mission statement is more profound now than it ever was — ethical, sustainable, next generation. This encapsulates everything that Kakahu stands for.
Tom Hargreaves
