Market information
| PROGRAM OBJECTIVE | KPIs | OUTCOMES | BENEFITS | FUTURE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provide effective, targeted market information |
|
|
|
|
Market information
Over the past year, the factors driving markets were again those which we are least able to predict – drought, the A$ and changes to animal disease trade barriers. This has made our task of keeping industry informed of developments and their likely impacts even more demanding and vital.
The Australian cattle and sheep industry projections attracted an unprecedented level of interest from media, industry, government and agribusiness providing a valuable basis for industry plans and market access initiatives.
Having upgraded the information and data foundations in previous years, we turned our focus to improving the analytical content of our work, and expanding our online services.
Subscribers to our online market news service more than doubled this year to over 3,500 clients, and overseas news agencies are now confident of picking up timely facts and interpretations of major meat market developments around the globe.
Our analytical work on key competitors and threats was also boosted, with a major profile of Brazil, the first competitive intelligence project. Other major competitors continued to be monitored with market brief reports delivered on the US, Argentina and Uruguay.
We also took a step back this year to question our role in the market information arena. We engaged an independent agency to venture their objective assessment of our long term direction. There was a strong positive assessment from current clients, but concerns that we have not reached anywhere near our potential impact, particularly with MLA members. This research has helped form our activities for next year which include more tailored services with a revamped Meat & Livestock Weekly and research papers.
Price risk management
Our price risk management program assisted in the prolific development and interest in cattle price risk management initiatives, including over-the-counter products from the Commonwealth Bank, Landmark and Elders. A standard cattle forward contract and trading terms and conditions was developed to give buyers and sellers confidence to enter into forward contracts – a vital step in developing a risk management culture in the industry.
Agreement was reached with the Sydney Futures Exchange to continue the MLA/SFE Cattle Futures contract for a further three years. The Cattle Futures Contract has been instrumental in giving players the confidence to launch other risk management products. However, trading in the contract was again disappointing with just a 15% lift this financial year with 1,700 completed trades.
National Livestock Reporting Service
We have continued to grow subscriptions to our regular market information service with over 125,000 emails and 30,000 faxes sent to subscribers. In addition, we boosted our web service with daily livestock market alerts.
A big challenge for the year was attaining ISO certification for our Quality Management System (QMS), which is used to underpin the delivery of accurate market reporting and analysis. NLRS achieved certification in August 2006.
The new NLRS database, Data Capture and Reporting Service (DCRS), which has been in construction since late 2003, was made fully operational in June 2007. DCRS integrates all the data collection, report generation and report dissemination for NLRS.