Tuesday 24th November. Dubbo is a town that lies 406km NE of Sydney and is often referred to as the crossroads of New South Wales – Brisbane to the North, Melbourne to the South, Sydney to the East and Adelaide to the West. The town is home to many truck drivers as the long journeys are broken by a change of driver or a stopover before getting back on the road again.
We were flying to Dubbo to meet with an iconic Australian called Roger Fletcher who started life as a sheep shearer, drover and is now the owner of Fletcher International Exports. The company is a sheep and lamb processor, and through the plant in Dubbo, and a sister plant in Western Australia, has a combined processing capacity of 4.5 million head per year. The company specialises in utilising all the sheep and lamb processed, including the wool which is cleaned and treated to the stage where it can be directly exported to China amongst other places, to be manufactured into the clothes we buy in our high streets! The company has customers in 90 countries.
Our visit started with an introduction to the plant by Colin Plant, the production manager who was originally from Northern Ireland and Adam Hughes, the Quality Assurance Manager. The plant could process 8500 sheep and lambs per day using one chain but running two shifts. In addition to the cold boning rooms which I was used to seeing in the other plants that we had visited, a hot boning room was used, and a proportion of the sheep could be slaughtered and processed within two hours!
The plant lairage was covered and held 4000 head at one time. Muzzled dogs were used in the pens, and also to unload the lorries as they arrived. The lorry drivers had their own dogs which travelled in compartments underneath the trailers. All the sheep were tagged, identifying the farm of origin, and arrived clean. (No rain and scorching conditions. 30˚C+.) Due to the large distances involved in any travel in Australia, the sheep could be transported for 48 hours without unloading, and there was no requirement for water or fans to be installed on the trucks.
The tour of the wool processing factory was fascinating. The wool is first removed from the pelt by a chemical process, and by scouring, (washing) combing and sorting the long fibres are isolated and ready for spinning. The mechanisation and sheer distance involved from start to finish with this process needs to be seen to be appreciated. As with the other plants that we had visited we were given a very informative and lengthy tour with permission to take pictures which is not always the case…
Our conversation with Roger Fletcher was entertaining, informative, challenging, and totally absorbing, as you would expect with a man of his stature within the Australian sheep farming and processing industry. I felt very privileged that he was so generous with his time during our meeting, and I can still see the glint in his eye as he recounted driving 5000 sheep, around 900 miles on foot across the outback. I asked him how many sheep he had lost on that journey, and the immediate answer was that you usually finished off with more than you had started with!
Roger was very concerned about the declining sheep numbers in Australia, which made procurement increasingly difficult. The key policy within his business was to seek efficiencies, and utilise and add value to every part of the carcass. It was mentioned that he even tried to market the ‘Bah’ in sheep!! The issue of live exports was discussed at length and in no uncertain terms.
He is also a farmer in his own right, owning 204,000 acres including 100,000 acres cropping, 8000 acres of irrigation, and 96,000 acres of grassland for natural pasture production. Within sight of the abattoir we could also see brand new grain stores, which have been built to accommodate Roger’s new grain business. When the Australian Government refused to extend the railway to service his new stores, he went ahead and built 5km of track himself. An extraordinary man, and a conversation to be valued and reflected upon over time.
The world is a small place, because we had been picked up that morning at Dubbo Airport by Lyn Sykes. I met Lyn in Ireland last year, when I was one of the students on her facilitation and family succession course. Lyn is respected throughout the world within the field of family succession, and I was amazed to find that she lived close to the Fletcher plant. After all, Australia is a fairly big place!
We spent a great evening in the company of Lyn and her husband John, at their newly renovated home. We were also joined for dinner by two of Lyn’s five boys. Lyn had insisted that we should not hire a car during our time in the area, and that she would drive us to our next stop at Greenthorpe, some three hours south of Dubbo the next day.
We were flying to Dubbo to meet with an iconic Australian called Roger Fletcher who started life as a sheep shearer, drover and is now the owner of Fletcher International Exports. The company is a sheep and lamb processor, and through the plant in Dubbo, and a sister plant in Western Australia, has a combined processing capacity of 4.5 million head per year. The company specialises in utilising all the sheep and lamb processed, including the wool which is cleaned and treated to the stage where it can be directly exported to China amongst other places, to be manufactured into the clothes we buy in our high streets! The company has customers in 90 countries.
Our visit started with an introduction to the plant by Colin Plant, the production manager who was originally from Northern Ireland and Adam Hughes, the Quality Assurance Manager. The plant could process 8500 sheep and lambs per day using one chain but running two shifts. In addition to the cold boning rooms which I was used to seeing in the other plants that we had visited, a hot boning room was used, and a proportion of the sheep could be slaughtered and processed within two hours!
The plant lairage was covered and held 4000 head at one time. Muzzled dogs were used in the pens, and also to unload the lorries as they arrived. The lorry drivers had their own dogs which travelled in compartments underneath the trailers. All the sheep were tagged, identifying the farm of origin, and arrived clean. (No rain and scorching conditions. 30˚C+.) Due to the large distances involved in any travel in Australia, the sheep could be transported for 48 hours without unloading, and there was no requirement for water or fans to be installed on the trucks.
The tour of the wool processing factory was fascinating. The wool is first removed from the pelt by a chemical process, and by scouring, (washing) combing and sorting the long fibres are isolated and ready for spinning. The mechanisation and sheer distance involved from start to finish with this process needs to be seen to be appreciated. As with the other plants that we had visited we were given a very informative and lengthy tour with permission to take pictures which is not always the case…
Our conversation with Roger Fletcher was entertaining, informative, challenging, and totally absorbing, as you would expect with a man of his stature within the Australian sheep farming and processing industry. I felt very privileged that he was so generous with his time during our meeting, and I can still see the glint in his eye as he recounted driving 5000 sheep, around 900 miles on foot across the outback. I asked him how many sheep he had lost on that journey, and the immediate answer was that you usually finished off with more than you had started with!
Roger was very concerned about the declining sheep numbers in Australia, which made procurement increasingly difficult. The key policy within his business was to seek efficiencies, and utilise and add value to every part of the carcass. It was mentioned that he even tried to market the ‘Bah’ in sheep!! The issue of live exports was discussed at length and in no uncertain terms.
He is also a farmer in his own right, owning 204,000 acres including 100,000 acres cropping, 8000 acres of irrigation, and 96,000 acres of grassland for natural pasture production. Within sight of the abattoir we could also see brand new grain stores, which have been built to accommodate Roger’s new grain business. When the Australian Government refused to extend the railway to service his new stores, he went ahead and built 5km of track himself. An extraordinary man, and a conversation to be valued and reflected upon over time.
The world is a small place, because we had been picked up that morning at Dubbo Airport by Lyn Sykes. I met Lyn in Ireland last year, when I was one of the students on her facilitation and family succession course. Lyn is respected throughout the world within the field of family succession, and I was amazed to find that she lived close to the Fletcher plant. After all, Australia is a fairly big place!
We spent a great evening in the company of Lyn and her husband John, at their newly renovated home. We were also joined for dinner by two of Lyn’s five boys. Lyn had insisted that we should not hire a car during our time in the area, and that she would drive us to our next stop at Greenthorpe, some three hours south of Dubbo the next day.
Where is the photo of you in your thongs!!!!
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