From the AFR in March 2016... Seems Tavistock implemented Jason...

From the AFR in March 2016...
Seems Tavistock implemented Jason Strong as MD.

Shehan Dissanayake’s unforgettable trip key to ending AACo disconnect

• The Australian
• 12:00AM March 26, 2016
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• DAMON KITNEY
  
  Victorian Business Editor
  Melbourne
  @DamonKitney
  

Shehan Dissanayake will never forget a trip he took around one of AACo’s properties with one of the company's longest-serving employees.
“I sat in a car with Henry Burke soon after we made the investment. He had been with company for 40 years. He had a curiosity and an energy that was extraordinary. When I went with him on a property there was this sense of determination. This vigour. But when we left the properties and came into the head office, somehow that dissipated,” he says.
“This was a pivotal moment in our feelings about the company and our assessment of it. It struck me that disconnect was somehow responsible for the company underperforming commercially.”
Since then and under the strategy of Jason Strong, the company's focus on branded beef and premium products has turned around the bottom line.
In November, AACo revealed a net profit of $50 million, a $64m improvement on the previous corresponding period.
Its boxed beef sales have jumped 70 per cent since the start of 2014, with its branded wagyu products in high demand. “What has changed is an alignment between the employees, the executives, the board, and the shareholders,” Dissanayake says. “When we first joined the company, that alignment was absent. Even worse there was a disconnect and I believe there had been a disconnect for a very long time.”
Angus Aitken, who recently visited AACo’s properties, including its flagship Livingstone Beef abattoir at Darwin, says much of the agricultural supply chain is “as inefficiently run as the waterfront pre Chris Corrigan getting involved in the mid 1990s, and that’s the opportunity for AACo over time”.
“This stock is still priced for a legacy perception, when in the last few years this business has vastly changed from a price taker of non value-added product to a price maker of multiple value-added beef products,” Aitken says.
AACo also wants to help the broader industry evolve by sharing more of its back-office systems with others.
“We have made meaningful investments in connecting the different aspects of our business financially to provide certainty and transparency as a public company — but also to create a sense of knowing where the business is at any moment in time,” Dissanayake says.
“We now share it with our partners that integrate into our supply chain. It would not be an investment they could make on their own, but it is one, I think, can be of extraordinary benefit to them. That is a part of the business we are very determined to expand over time.”
As one so schooled in a culture of innovation, Dissanayake doesn’t hide his desire to add more to the economy. “The culture in Australia is really quite extraordinary. But the context and speed of innovation, that engine, needs to be fired up a bit,” he says.
The same goes for the development of Northern Australia. The federal government is preparing to launch the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which will administer a $5 billion loan scheme to stimulate development. “I still have some questions about how the north embraces its future,” Dissanayake says. But “there is enormous benefit and prosperity to Australia in those decisions”.

In QCL Shehan says he will not be taking up the role as MD.
I think they will purge a few issues. On Landline they mentioned they were taking Water Buffalo and could do it once every fortnight because of demand, but didnt because they want to concentrate on branded box meat.

This may well drift lower.

Sonic