Crikey it seems to have been a long cold winter.  Though maybe its not any colder or longer than usual but for us it has been a bit different this winter. We have been commissioning the new feedmill for the last 4 weeks and some of the engineers have travelled from afar, once onsite they are keen to do long hours and get as much done as possible over several days before travelling home. A lot of these days have ended well into darkness. In hindsight I should have invested in a heater, Ben from Auckland is the automation engineer, his work is mainly software related so sitting out in the shed using his laptop with no heater until 9pm has been quite brutal.  

4 weeks of commissioning done, and I suspect it will take another 4 weeks before everything is bedded in and running smoothly. At this stage we will keep the old feedmill functioning for the layers mash and as backup. The new feedmill is much more complex and if we have a breakdown it is likely to require outside help to fix the problem causing time delays.

I become aware in early winter that during the autumn more grain than usual had been used on farms and this coupled with lower harvest yields could result in a perceived shortage for springtime. I have found in the past that no matter how bad the perceived grain shortage is, grain always seems to suddenly appear. However, the price can lift considerably.

With these thoughts, I decided to contract more plus brought more on the spot market filling the silos full. We now have enough contracted wheat and barley to manufacture the same amount of calf meal as last season without going to the spot market again. We have also contracted our molasses, canola oil and soy meal. Our main supplier of peas is 20% short of what we normally receive but hopefully we can find some more.

This means our price should be very stable and it will depend on sales as to whether we will need to do a price review at all during the season. There have been price increases for our raw materials however we have been able to limit the price increases for the calf meal to $12 per tonne.

Spring Prices 2021 effective from July 1^st

High Octane Aoraki Calf Meal        40 x 25kg              $760 + GST ex our yard

Low Protein Aoraki Calf Meal        40 x 25kg               $710 + GST ex our yard

Regards

Ken