Helping grow
the country

PGG Wrightson's General Manager for Rural Real Estate Peter Newbold joins The Country's Jamie Mackay to take a look at the rural property market this month.

Lifestyle sections have overtaken rural sales as they have increased from approximately 6 billion to 9 billion dollars, Mackay said.

Newbold confirmed this and said he thought it would continue to increase over the next few years.

People were looking to invest their money as Covid-19 continued to place restrictions around travel, Mackay said. He asked if these people would look at investing in the rural market.

Newbold said he was seeing more first time and new investors.

"Dairy has been doldrums yet it has near record returns at the moment, there is continued interest in horticulture, and sheep and beef keep chugging along," Mackay said.

Click the play button for the full interview.

Industry buoyant as prevailing trends head towards the positive

This season’s velvet sales conclude in mid-April.

Average prices achieved by deer farmers for velvet this year are around $105 per kilogram net, compared to $128 per kilogram last season. Despite that reduction the industry is generally buoyant, with most trends going in the right direction, including production, which is increasing at a rate of 10 per cent per annum. Farmers are producing better velvet throughout the age groups, with both an increase in the weight produced, and an improvement in quality.

Grading guidelines will be subject to review over the coming months, enabling better descriptions and images for buyers and sellers. More multi-pointed heads are now in the system as spikers, or yearlings, and adults, which are producing much thicker velvet. Some producers perceive these animals having more actively growing velvet around the antler tips as an advantage. However, for the end user or processor, that translates to greater difficulty in manufacturing a product suitable for consumption with less true tip area, and possibly a compromise in the resulting quality.

Seasonal histories, tracking the performance of the velvet produced by individual clients, will be sent out during May. Over the coming months, growers will also receive more information about implementing the VelTrak tagging system, which uses a UHF chip enabling velvet to be rapidly tracked up or down the supply chain, confirming provenance, validating the integrity of New Zealand’s production systems, and further entrenching the strong reputation our velvet has established in Korea and China.

Tony Cochrane, PGG Wrightson National Velvet Manager

Bideford, Wairarapa farmer Dion Kilmister uses Go-Stock to accelerate business growth

Go-Stock is a PGG Wrightson initiative that has put 1.2 million lambs and 200,000 cattle on farms throughout New Zealand over the past five years.

PGG Wrightson buys the stock and retains ownership, meaning no initial cash outlay for farmers. Farmers then graze and grow the stock before deciding, in conjunction with us, when and where PGG Wrightson will sell them. PGG Wrightson pays any resulting positive trading margin to the farmer, less our fees and selling costs.

Go Stock operates for sheep, cattle, and was recently extended to deer.

Dion Kilmister of Bideford, Wairarapa, has used Go-Stock to accelerate growth and add value to his business:

“On our home farm we run around 10,000 stock units, breeding and finishing beef, though have branched out to more farms around the lower North Island, and have 27,000 stock units overall.

“You need to have more than one tool in your toolbox: you can’t fix a fence just with a fence strainer. Go-Stock really adds value to our business, and has come into play with quite a proportion of our stock. It really works in those times when cash flow is pinched.

“Cattle is a big outlay. Buying 200 or 300 cattle at a time is a lot of money to come up with, sometimes at inconvenient times of the year. Go-Stock works really well. We work on a buyer price margin, then trade back out to the PGG Wrightson scheme. We have used the programme for lambs as well. At our peak on the home farm we have had 700 cattle and around 3000 lambs on Go-Stock.

“We bought a dairy farm two years ago and used all our equity to buy the land. We were able to take on 600 Go-Stock cattle to stock that farm, and have just done another deal on a neighbouring farm that we will use Go-Stock for as well.

“It’s been a real positive for our business: a big part of our growth. I highly recommend it.”

For more information about Go-Stock click here,

or to speak to your local PGG Wrightson livestock representative click here.

Growth continues with further expansion for New Zealand’s virtual saleyard

In line with its growth since it began operating in May 2019, bidr® recently appointed two additional team members.

Bianca Murch has joined as Upper South Island Territory Manager, extending her eight-year career in the rural servicing industry, which includes a Bachelor of Commerce (Agriculture) from Lincoln University. Bianca is based in Darfield.

Sam Murphy, the company’s new Lower South Island Territory Manager, grew up on a South Canterbury family sheep and beef farm, graduated from Otago University after studying Media, Communications, and Music, and has worked in the shearing industry for much of the last 10 years. Sam is based in Dunedin.

Click here to meet the bidr team.