THERE was a cattle sale held in Inverell on Friday morning at the office of Bob Jamieson Agencies.
It yarded 1500 head of cattle, was attended by between 30 and 35 top local producers and about 140 buyers and had a barbecue lunch afterwards for producers to discuss sale highlights.
The Blue Ribband Video Cattle Sale (Sale: 914) started at noon and was an Auctionplus online sale; typical of the many held so far at Jamieson’s that recently led to them being awarded the Auctionsplus 2010-2011 No1 Branch For Cattle Award – and that is national recognition for industry leadership.
“Each year Auctionsplus might sell 150 – 160,000 cattle, they could sell 200,000 sheep a year all over Eastern Australia, what we do is lease the site and put on our own sale. It’s a system where people are selling their stock on-farm,” Mr Jamieson said.
“We go out and photograph and video the cattle, we assess the cattle, we do three or four pages of descriptions, we then promote those cattle and line them up in a format,” he said.
Anyone in Australia who owns a computer can then bid for the cattle and Mr Jamieson said his agency has embraced the system since its inception in the 1990s.
“But we’ve really been using it intensely for the last two and a half to three years,” Mr Jamieson said. “There were 432 agents who used Auctionsplus this year from all over Australia, and the award for the biggest user usually goes to Western Australia or to northern Queensland because of the sheer numbers and so on.
“What we’re pretty proud about is that we’ve recently received the national award for the biggest user of Auctionsplus for cattle in Australia and it’s the first time it has ever come to NSW,” Mr Jamieson said.
Active promotion, more detailed descriptions and assessments and a good number of vendors, who have used and are familiar with the system, are things Mr Jamieson puts down to his agency’s success in bringing the trophy to this state.
“By example, the last time Macintyre Station lined cattle up, a guy from Melbourne bought them – now, if they were in Inverell saleyards, that guy has never heard of Inverell saleyards. But because he can switch his computer on he can see a full assessment,” Mr Jamieson said.
It is an award viewed by Mr Jamieson as indicative of the strength of the cattle industry in this area.
“Inverell is renowned for its quality and it’s the top end of that quality that we’re trying to attract, and that’s why you’ve got the people from Macintyre Station, they’ve got perhaps $1 million worth of cattle on this sale today,” he said. But Mr Jamieson still considers there is a big future for the Inverell saleyard.
“We’re actively looking to be involved in the Inverell saleyards, we believe in saleyards, but we also believe in auctions. There’ll always be a place for saleyards, but for the very big lines of high quality stock, where the vendor has the opportunity to say ‘No – I want more money than that’ rather than trucking them into the saleyards and having them knocked about - yes, this is the future for the big lines of high quality stock,” Mr Jamieson said.
General Manager of Macintyre and Myall Creek stations, Greg Stevens, is a regular at Jamieson’s and had 700 head of high quality Brangus-Angus cross cattle at Friday’s sale.
“We’re very happy with the system, there’s no problem at all,” Mr Stevens said.
“In my opinion it’s better than the saleyards, our cattle stay on our property, we put a reserve on them and if it doesn’t reach it there’s no difference – we go home.
“We’re cutting down costs and getting exceptional prices, we’re probably starting to get into premium prices with people starting to know our cattle,” Mr Stevens said.
Macintyre Station has been using the online system for about three years and Mr Stevens has seen it grow more popular.
“It’s starting to get bigger and bigger and I can’t be anything else but a fan,” he said.
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