Generic promotion axed for NZ lamb in UK

The meat industry says it is switching away from a generic promotion of New Zealand lamb in Britain to a more targeted programme in line with the commercial needs of the exporters.

Beef and Lamb New Zealand chief executive Scott Champion said today the shift in focus had been made in response to extensive market research in Europe.

Britain is New Zealand's largest sheepmeat market and imported $646 million worth of meat in the 2009-2010 season -- equivalent to 30 percent of retail lamb sales there.

Past promotions by the industry board and its predecessors, the Meat Board and Meat and Wool NZ meant that 90 percent consumers understood lamb came from New Zealand, Dr Champion said.

Lamb was the most expensive proteins in UK supermarkets and research showed that the industry needed to "directly support the premium positioning of the New Zealand lamb brand".

Big exporters were investing their own money alongside farmer levies into promotions targeted to consumer and retail needs, he said. The traditional New Zealand rosette which had been used to label lamb would continue to be used.

The board's general manager of market development, Craig Finch, told NZPA the market research showed a high percentage of UK consumers were impulse shoppers: "They don't pre-plan what meat they're going to buy before they go into the supermarket".

Though the latest austerity measures by the British Government had not yet started to kick in, consumers were already changing their buying habits.

"Purchasing patterns in the UK have changed markedly," he said. About 40 percent of products sold in supermarkets were "on special", and people shopped more frequently for smaller amounts.

Beef and Lamb expected NZ lamb to be partly buffered from these effects because it was already the most expensive meat, and so was being bought by affluent households likely to be less hurt by economic cuts.

Also, NZ lamb was so iconic that retailers were willing to trim their margins on it to get customers in the door: two supermarkets had said that getting a customer to buy NZ lamb was worth 36 pounds ($NZ73) extra in the shopping basket as they also bought the other ingredients for a meal.

"People are making a special occasion out of eating at home -- there's a lot more of that," Mr Finch said.

But he noted that exporters were also taking into account foreign exchange effects.

Some might switch from a market where lamb fetched a very high price, if sales in another market such as the Middle East would mean more money returned to the farm gate, compared to a sale which had been denominated in euros or pounds sterling.

"The maximisation of returns will be a very interesting process," he said, though Britain would remain an important market. Chilled lamb now made up about 43 percent of sendings to Britain, which once had only frozen imports.

Beef and Lamb NZ was now working on similar research looking at important beef markets.