Export
Issue No. 41 - June/July 2008
SAMEX meats world expectations
SAMEX Australian Meat Company principal Rob Black is one of Australia’s nine Export Heroes for 2008, named by the Australian Institute of Export.
Rob and his team have built a $100million turnover business, an international meat products trading business based in Adelaide, almost without fanfare.
Rob has been in the meat trade for 30 years, starting out as a retail butcher in his father’s shops. He and business partner Garry Mannet joined forces some 25 years ago to set up a meat packing and production facility at Murray Bridge.
“The trading side soon outgrew it,” Rob says. While growing SAMEX apace, Rob also represented the Australian meat trade in SA, WA and overseas in Bahrain. Now SAMEX regularly buys a million sheep a year.
Rob travels constantly. In the past three decades he has spent three months in the year overseas.
Meat commodity pricing presents a constantly changing matrix. SAMEX buys from 13 meat exporting countries and sells into 46.
“The beauty of having such a diversified business is success comes down to looking after customers,” Rob says.
For some time SAMEX has supplied meat to the Algerian Army, sourced from Brazil. Recently the price has risen substantially, so Rob is looking in Australia for a new supplier.
“We have to do a lot of research. We spend about $500,000 a year in travel. A lot of our manpower – there are 18 people in the company – goes to research. “
SAMEX has rota...
