Teys Wagga credits 200 entries for Beef Carcase Comp processor victory

The NSW plant picked up the inaugural award at the National Beef Carcase Competition dinner held on Tuesday evening in conjunction with Beef Australia in Rockhampton.

It was awarded to the processing plant that achieved the highest score based on number of entries, pen scores and timeliness of the data submission.

Teys Australia's general manager of feedlots Grant Garey accepted the award on Tuesday evening on behalf of the Wagga plant, which he said employs roughly 700 people.

He said the Wagga plant predominantly processed grain fed cattle, with the exception of a smaller amount of grassfed.

The plant processes 1000 head of cattle per day and is located an hour away from the company's Jindalee feedlot.

Mr Garey said the award was unexpected, but thought it was likely the result of the plant's large volume of high quality entries.

"We had a lot of really high quality entries, which I guess culminated in us being successful and getting that award," he said.

"We had 200 head entered out of the 732 entries."

Mr Garey said cattle from The Land's Beef Spectacular Feedback Trial were processed at Teys and cross-entered into the national competition for Beef.

"We run a feeder steer competition every year and so a lot of the people that enter our competition in a Beef year, cross-enter the same cattle into the Beef Australia carcase competition," he said.

"Our competition covers everything from NLIS compliance, NVD compliance, all through the feedlot feeding process, cattle performance, animal health and carcase grading, so it's not just a carcase competition."

Mr Garey said all of the Teys plants had their own competitions.

"We really love to support these competitions for producers, it brings everyone together to talk about what we all love doing," he said.

"For us, we give the producers a lot of feedback around how their cattle have performed through the feeding period and how the carcase performed.

"Ours is a very commercial competition, so they get all that feedback and get to see how they've performed against their peers and they just love to get that information and sit down and go through it with their mates and their colleagues."

He said he'd seen the results from carcase competitions in action and thought producers were using the data collected to improve their herds, whether it be through breeding programs and management, or what markets they were targeting.

Mr Garey said many producers from around the country that processed through Teys had come to Rockhampton to attend Beef and it was great to see so many of them at the competition dinner.

"Teys is a big supporter of Beef Australia and one of the partners this year and we love having the opportunity catch up with a lot of our cattle suppliers," he said.

"This area is a key region for us with our plant in Rockhampton and plant in Biloela. Central Queensland is a really key place for us."