While the beef industry provides food and a livelihood to thousands of people, disruptions within supply chains can have a significant impact on the company’s profit, leading to a domino effect in all aspects of the business.

Executive for Marketing and Sales Cyprianus Khaiseb, says that Meatco has a production schedule in place to manage our customers’ expectations at all times. “With low cattle numbers expected this year in particular, we need to manage our production schedules more effectively.”

Meatco works on a three-month production planning schedule with the aim of placing 70% of production forward to regular, key customers such as those in the EU markets. “Serving these clients requires consistent supply and we can only do that when we have enough raw material. Supply becomes challenging if delivery agreements are not honoured,” he says.

Overall, the production schedule helps Meatco identify how many clients need to be supplied at any given time to maintain our market share and to maximise producer returns. For this reason it is important for producers to assist Meatco to better plan ahead to further grow the industry and to have a positive rather than a negative effect on producer prices and the business as a whole. “No-show” creates a problem, as most of the time the booked cattle cannot be filled up in time with cattle from other producers. This situation potentially can cause fellow producers losing slaughter space to a “no-show” producer in peak times.

According to Meatco CEO Adv. Vekuii Rukoro, the habit of not honouring delivery agreements will have disastrous consequences for our marketing opportunities in the lucrative EU markets.
Therefore farmers are urged to work closely with their procurement officer to notify us well in advance if they want to cancel their slaughter slots so that we remain in a position to develop alternatives that will mitigate potential disruptions.

Meatco is committed to all its stakeholders to increase demand. That’s why it is important to point out issues that are often disregarded by one segment, but have an impact on the entire industry.