Angus Pastoral Company: Name is the game for family
WITH a name like Angus, there was only one focus for these cattle farmers, writes SARAH HUDSON.
WHEN your surname is Angus, a career path is almost predetermined.
So it is with the Angus family of Clermont in Queensland, with John and Clova starting a beef enterprise in 1960.
Angus Pastoral Company is now run by Blair and Josie Angus and their four children, with 161,870ha spread across four properties, running 35,000 EU-accredited Angus Belmont Red composite cattle.
The company is vertically integrated, marketed through Signature Beef, which has seven distinct brands, selling in Australia (to restaurants, food services and wholesale) and exporting to more than 30 overseas countries.
“When people realise Angus is the family surname they say, you’ve got to be kidding,” said Tess Camm, who oversees the Signature Beef brand and is Josie’s niece.
Angus Pastoral Co’s properties are spread across two regions of Queensland, stretching across a seven-hour drive.
The home property, Kimberley Station, was bought in 1978 and is surrounded by Sondella (’91) and Chesterfield (’96), in the Moranbah region, which has black and red loamy soil and has a dry heat, receiving an average annual rainfall of 600mm.
In contrast, Carpentaria Downs (’05) is basalt country with monsoonal weather, receiving an annual average of 700mm. It is here they run their breeding program.
The composite herd combines Angus with the Belmont Red, a breed developed by the CSIRO in the 1950s for the Australian tropics, with high fertility, high resistance to ticks, heat tolerance and good growth.
CALF MUSCLE
THE herd is joined in late January for a November calving, which takes advantage of Carpentaria Downs’s wet season.
A mob of about 200 elite females are selected for breeding with in-house bulls, and an artificial insemination program is used. Angus genetics are also outsourced from Dulverton Angus in NSW.
“When selecting a bull, we are looking for the silhouette of the animal, a wide-frame, plenty of length,” Tess said.
“We are not just breeding for kilograms but so the chef is happy with what is on the plate, the best-eating traits and we’ve found that comes down to hair and skin.”
Tess said a part of their breeding program visually assesses for animals with fine, silky hair and soft pliable skin.
“It sounds unconventional, but we’ve followed the animals through and have found it leads to a finer grain of meat. Instead of coarse lines of marbling in meat, it’s finer, with even distribution.”
The Angus family choose to wean calves about eight to nine months of age.
“There’s different nutrition in the north — it’s less nutrient dense — and so we have to manage accordingly to grow the best calves.”
STOCK TAKE
WHILE on Carpentaria Downs, the stocking rate is about one beast per 10ha and they feed on pastures of blue grass, buffel grass and a legume stylo grass. Pastures are rested for long periods, rotated about every four months.
After weaning, the mob is transported to their southern properties. At about 24 months of age cattle are taken off pastures and moved to Angus Pastoral Co’s feedlots, drafted into three streams, designed to meet end-user requirements.
Feeding programs run from 70, 120 or 200 days, depending on the market cattle are destined for, tailored to their seven brands. Tess said Angus Pastoral Co started value-adding in 1999 through the Signature Beef company, after years selling through conventional processors.
“The Mackay Show committee had called for local beef producers to provide steaks at a community barbecue,” she explained.
“The feedback the Anguses received was great, the public loved their meat. They saw they had a better than average product but received an average price in return.”
STEAK OUT
IN 2006, Signature Beef was established as the family began exporting their beef. This led to the development of a suite of brands as market reach developed.
Their flagship brand was Kimberley Red, MSA-graded and grain fed, marketed domestically before being the Angus family’s first brand to export.
Their self-named brand, Angus Pastoral Co, is similar to Kimberley Red, on a 120-day feeding, but is EU-accredited rather than MSA and is zero to two tooth, exported throughout the EU.
The Angus family was one of the first cattle producers to take advantage of Australia’s EU high quality beef grain-fed quota, with cattle required to meet stringent traceability, biosecurity and meat quality requirements.
“The cattle receive their standard health treatments but because we’re in the north, they suffer few health conditions,” she said.
About 60 per cent of throughput is sold through the Kimberley Red and Angus Pastoral Co brands.
In contrast, another Signature Beef brand is Sondella, which takes about 35 per cent of supply.
These MSA-graded cattle are fed on 70-day grain programs for smaller-framed or earlier maturing animals, finished at 240kg carcass weight for domestic, Middle Eastern or Chinese customers, who “prefer moderate-sized cuts”.
Sondella also uses supplied animals from Wonga Plains feedlot.
Signature Beef’s boutique brand is Oino Gustus, which takes about 5 per cent of the best performing, “hand selected” animals.
These are on a 200-day grain feeding program and have those silky coats and soft skin. Oino Gustus are both MSA and EU-accredited and are slaughtered at 340kg carcass weight for EU, Chinese and domestic markets.
“We are taking the cattle that customers know and love from Kimberley Red, and enhancing the marbling through a longer feeding program”.
BOSS OF THE BOARD
SIGNATURE Beef’s other brands include Boss, which takes those cattle that don’t meet required specifications, as well as Signature Veal and Signature wagyu, which both use outside suppliers.
About 350 cattle are slaughtered every week at the Northern Cooperative Meat Company, about 1300km away, one of only eight in Australia that has accreditation for chilling for Chinese markets.
After the carcass is chilled for 36 hours, it is then assessed for a range of meat quality and market access requirements, including fat, meat colour, marbling content and distribution, ossification, and then visually assessed to determine the most suitable market for that carcass.
Tess said Blair and Josie were heavily involved in the cattle industry.
Blair is the chairman of Beef Australia, which runs a beef expo in Rockhampton and is also on the Cattle Council’s market advisory committee. Josie is director of Trade and Investment Queensland.
“Blair’s father was a butcher and so all his life Blair has not just seen a steer on a truck, but seen it for the shape of its muscles and how it would look on a plate,” Tess said.
“He has an innate understanding of raising cattle and then presenting it to the end user.”
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