Kinross Station Hampshire Down lamb cutlets set to hit $120/kg

The humble lamb chop is not so humble with premium cutlet prices soaring to more than $120/kg in Sydney and Melbourne this week.

The humble lamb chop is no longer so humble with prices for premium cutlets topping a whopping $120/kg in Sydney and Melbourne this week.

The cutlets are from a little-known and rare breed of black face sheep, the Hampshire Down, which surging in popularity.

Tom Bull, whose family runs the Kinross Station Hampshire Down lamb brand from their farm at Holbrook in southern NSW, said his cutlets were expect to hit $120/kg this week.

The Bulls’ Hampshire Downs have surged in popularity in recent years with its traits for marbling traits, usually associated with beef, pioneering the premium lamb market.

Kinross Station will today launch its full-blood Kinross Heritage brand in Melbourne at Meatsmith and Sydney at Randwick’s Origin Meats.

Tom Bull with his kids Hamish, Hattie, and Eddie. Picture Yuri Kouzmin

Kinross Station owner and The Weekly Times Coles 2018 Farmer of the Year winner Tom Bull said the lamb market had lacked a premium product for some time.

“Wagyu entered the market two decades ago, and since then it’s common to see many upper echelon butchers offer Wagyu beef at over $100 a kilogram, and up to $400 a kilogram,” he said.

“The premium end of the beef market, featuring predominantly Angus and Wagyu brands, is a multi-billion dollar segment of the market. However, in lamb, we are still a generic commodity and consumers have little choice in the market.”

While Hampshire Down premium lamb cutlets might be expensive for the average family budget, Mr Bull said two per consumer would likely be adequate.

At Kinross Station the Bull family has one of the world’s largest flocks of the Hampshire Down sheep and runs their Lambpro seedstock business too.

Like many of the traditional black faced breeds, the Hampshire Down faced nearly a century of declining numbers with their black fibres creating contamination risks to the Merino wool industry.