An artisan's eye for a Japanese specialty
The beef market in Australia has changed a lot in the past 40 years as the confluences of better quality control and increased diversity of cultural influences have come together, says specialist Wagyu breeder and finisher Takao Suzuki.
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Mr Suzuki walks and talks his way around his semi-complete, but already operational purpose-built facility just beyond the fringes of Bathurst, towards Evans Plains.
As a builder who has been busy with the fit-outs suddenly interrupts looking for AA batteries for one of his power tools, Mr Suzuki is straight on the phone to get somebody on staff to help him out and then picks up exactly where he left off, not missing a beat.
He's a busy man. He is aiming to lift his current capacity of 240 head of Wagyu on feed to 600 by 2025 under his traditional Japanese raising and finishing system.
And he wants to prove Australia has the right genetics to do every bit as good a job as the very best producers in Japan.
His genetic direction has taken him along a different path to most breeders, using some lesser known sires which in his view have better carcase weight and yield while maintaining marbling.
"We have quite a different bloodline compared to the others. We're chasing a more solid carcase weight .... higher growth. Of course we do get marbling as well, but a lot of marbling sires in Australia are very small.
"So we're trying to balance out that we get the quality as well as the carcase weight."
Only meat with a marble score of 9 or better makes it into the Suzuki brand.
"Fortunately, so far, we're getting 95pc of our product falling into the 9, 9-plus."
Growing the best from what we have
A mere stone's throw from the Central Tablelands city of Bathurst is perhaps one of the most unique beef operations in the country.
Suzuki Wagyu uses traditional Japanese practices, and its owner, Takao Suzuki, is keen to show the world that top-grade Wagyu, akin to the best in Japan, can be grown here In Australia using existing genetics.
However, his journey began in much more humble circumstances.
Mr Suzuki was born in Japan's Chiba prefecture, a region on Tokyo's eastern outskirts, in 1967 and in his early twenties worked on a local dairy farm.
It was here, after about four years on the job, that he would by chance meet a veterinarian with connections to Rangers Valley feedlot's administration team at Glen Innes, which at the time was seeking Japanese staff.
In 1991 he would therefore pick up his life and move countries to spend two years on the feedlot's feeding team before becoming a pen rider and later a technical assistant, all this being during the period the feedlot introduced Wagyus.
This experience gave him the necessary grounding and the right connections to take advantage of another opportunity that would come knocking in 2006.
Early that year, in the boardrooms of the Australian Agricultural Company and Westholme Wagyu, a deal was being finalised for the AACo to purchase the Westholme herd - the largest fullblood Wagyu herd in the country at the time.
The deal would, of course, go ahead, but some of the Japanese clients who owned cattle had been looking for a way to offload their livestock.
Westholme's business model meant it imported Japanese cattle from the US, its business being to breed the cattle in Australia and then send them live to Japan.
"Back in 2006 they decided to sell the entire business to the AACo, but some of the Japanese clients already owned cattle in Westholme as part of their share and they tried to get out of Westholme, so they contacted me to start a Wagyu farm in the Megalong Valley," Mr Suzuki said.
As part of his role as technical assistant at Rangers Valley, he would liaise with both Australian Wagyu and Wagyu-cross producers, as well as Wagyu breeders in Japan about the performance of the sire lines being trialled on feed, hence his connections.
He said they started with 120 females (cows and heifers), made up of animals originally from the Westholme herd at Tarana.
It was a small operation in the Megalong Valley, but also included a second farm purchased specifically for breeding, which was located between Orange and Bathurst.
However, those farms have since been sold to consolidate the operation on Dunkeld Farm, formerly named, and still referred to by the locals as Dunkeld Dairy, at Evans Plains near Bathurst.
He said he hadn't planned for the operation to get as big as it has, but he was keen to prove the potential of the genetics already in Australia.
"When I left Rangers Valley, I thought I'll do something to show what they (Wagyu) can't do in the feedlot ... yes we can do a lot of things (in a feedlot), but we can't do micromanagement like this in the feedlot, this is difficult," he said.
"I want show the real value of the Wagyu in Australia. Everyone is thinking 'oh yeh, Australian Wagyu is second hand - it's not going to get the best genetics out of Japan', but that's not right."
Mr Suzuki and his business partner bought the 365 hectare Dunkeld Farm near Bathurst in 2018 and moved the operation from the Megalong Valley to its new home during 2020.
The farm, which used to be a dairy, was already approved to feed 990 head.
The breeding herd includes about 400 cows, and so far there is about 240 head on feed with a longer term target of 600 head on feed by 2025, the extra capacity allowing him to finish more animals and reduce the supply gaps currently experienced throughout the year.
The original feeding shed was the milking shed, which has been re-fitted for the specialised feeding program.
The second shed is up and partially running, with the internal fit-out about half done, and the third shed to begin construction soon.
The Japanese finishing style includes being under cover, plus the animals are managed in age groups, going into their pens of four at 4-5 months old and remaining in those groups until slaughter.
Having the four in a pen allows micromanagement of their feeding and conditions, their performance being monitored closely right through until the 30 months old for steers and 32 months old for heifers.
The operation includes three feeding systems, including prior to weaning where they have access to ration while on the cow, then a weaning ration which they go onto around four months old and then onto the finishing ration at around 14 months old.
The extended time on a total mixed ration, which is made to the farm's specifications by Furneys at Dubbo, and close management, allows the operators to keep stress to an absolute minimum throughout their life.
This provides the absolute best quality end product in presentation and eating quality and maximises carcase yield.
Most of the fodder for the cattle is now grown on farm, including oats, rye grass and lucerne, but Mr Suzuki does bring in rice straw from Echuca for use in the finisher ration.
"The rice straw is a traditional method for finishing off the Wagyus in Japan," he said, explaining it was due to the fibre type and an enzyme it encouraged which helped the animal's gut health.
At the finishing stage, each animal was eating about 9-10kg of dry matter a head per day, plus about two kilograms of the rice straw.
The younger cattle were fed about 5-6kg a day, plus about 4kg of roughage.
All this produced waste and so each pen was cleaned out once every four weeks, straight into the newly purpose-built composting system.
"We're trying to be sustainable - it's quite a highly productive farm that was consolidated from three to one farm under the dairy ownership during the 1990s," Mr Suzuki said.
The manure was composted before being spread on the pasture and cropping areas, a practice that was only begun in the past year and will gradually allow reduced artificial fertiliser usage, urea in particular having been a large expense in the past few years.
"We try to minimise using chemical as well (for weeds), so we split the paddocks into small areas and give them more grazing pressure to control the weeds," he said.
"We're using the crops in conjunction with this to manage the weeds.
I want show the real value of the Wagyu in Australia. Everyone is thinking 'oh yeh, Australian Wagyu is second hand - it's not going to get the best genetics out of Japan', but that's not right.
- Takao Suzuki, Suzuki Wagyu.
"We will see in the next five years just how much difference we can make on this property."
During the latter half of this year, he would also begin a project around reducing the business' carbon footprint, which would include planting trees as the property had very few.
"We're trying to make it more sustainable so this whole system will be a continuous farm even after my generation or the generation after."
Suzuki quality sells out regularly
As much as 75 per cent of Suzuki Wagyu's product is sold domestically into Sydney and Brisbane, plus a small quantity to Darwin, says the owner of the unique beef brand, Takao Suzuki.
The other 25pc is sold to export, including into the Middle East.
Before the snap abattoir bans by China during 2020-2022, Mr Suzuki, who grows and finishes his cattle using traditional Japanese methods, also had access to Chinese market through the company's Shanghai branch.
"It's a pity we can't sell it (into China), but the China market is very difficult market," he said.
His high level of domestic market patronage came about during the COVID pandemic shutdowns and from being blocked from China. As restaurants closed, he was able to shift quickly into home deliveries via a network of wholesalers and online retailers, which maintain his turnover.
"The price has fluctuated a lot since COVID. Same time as we had a shortage of supply as well, so we just concentrated into more household consumption, which is by the home delivery in Sydney, which makes it a lot easier to control the prices, rather than rely on the restaurants," he said.
"We have quite a big range of consumption in the (domestic) Asian market, so we have a lot of secondary cuts that we sell in high volume as well."
He said the slowest moving cuts were his loin cuts because of their retail value.
"It's very rarely that the household is using the very expensive loin cuts, so we're selling the loin cuts to the Middle East - they're paying approximately $150-$180 a kilogram."
Comparatively, the household consumption cuts range between $30/kg and $80/kg.
He said the meat was offered for sale online, through specialty retailers like Tarra Mare Prime and Meet Meats, with a pre-sale online order, and those outfits handled the delivery, but Suzuki provided all the point of sale labelling and package branding.
The product was typically sold out within about two weeks, and with a kill only done every two months, that left a gap in supply for about six weeks.
The beef sold to the Middle East was packaged by the abattoir at Casino, where the cattle were killed, but retained the Suzuki Wagyu brand. This beef was exported with his business partner's products, which allowed him to access that niche export market. Otherwise, his volume was too small.
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Andrew Norris
Based in Orange, NSW. Formerly editor at The Land for more than a decade with more than two decades in agricultural media.
