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AGRIBUSINESS
JBS will permanently close its Cobram plant
JAMIE-LEE OLDFIELD, The Weekly Times
September 21, 2017 8:52am
SIX months after announcing temporary closures, meat processor JBS will permanently close its Cobram plant.

It will also shut up shop on its small animal arm of the Longford, Tasmania, plant, which has also been temporarily closed since April.

This will impact nearly 195 meat workers at Cobram and 40 at Longford.

The Longford plant was temporarily closed in March, with Cobram following in April, and under the industrial agreements for both sites, the plants will be deemed permanently closed as of October 23.

Redundancies were offered to staff this week.

JBS director John Berry said the Cobram plant would go into care and maintenance mode, while Longford would continue to process beef.

“Any decisions in the future will be based on availability of livestock and continuity of supply,” he said.

Late last month Churchill abattoir in Ipswich, Queensland, announced it would close by the end of September, putting up to 500 people out of work.

Manildra Meat Company put more than 200 staff off when its Cootamundra, NSW, plant closed in February, while in Western Australia an Esperance abattoir closure left more than 100 people out of a job that same month.

Australian Meat Group’s Deniliquin, NSW, abattoir, Southern Meats’ plant at Goulburn, NSW, and the McGillivray family’s Gunbower abattoir have also been casualties of what has been described as the “worst trading environment in history” for meat processors.

It comes just a week after the senate inquiry into the effect of market consolidation on the red meat processing sector handed down its final report.

Australian Meat Industry Council Chairman Lachie Hart said the output from the report to assist all of the supply chain seem limited.

“What the red meat industry needs is government assistance to deliver a sustainable and profitable supply chain for the benefit of all stakeholders,” he said.

“We need governments to be focusing on key sustainability issues including better energy policies, improved infrastructure and assistance for increased market access to enhance the marketing opportunities of our products at both retail and export markets.”


Meat and Livestock Australia boss Richard Norton said major consolidation concerns were playing out during the senate inquiry, with Churchill, Australia’s largest domestic abattoir shutting down in Queensland.

“The processing sector is under enormous stress — high energy costs, a mountain of beef coming out of the USA…we’ve had supermarkets like Costco in South Korea claiming Australian beef is too dear and going to US beef — so the consolidation of processing was going on while the inquiry was on,” he said.

“With a high currency, low numbers, and high cost of production and processing in Australia, we are a little bit like the Murray Goulburn of the beef industry at the moment, everywhere else has low prices and we have high farm gate beef prices — we are out of synch with the rest of the world.”


So is JBS & Lewis battleing for control. Are electricity costs the cheapest in Darwin. Does Darwin have solar electricity.