Brownrigg Agriculture

The Brownrigg Agriculture livestock business is built on the natural pasture production strengths of the group’s farming operations in Hawke’s Bay, covering 12 farm properties.

To complement these strengths and enable the year-round servicing of market partners, Brownrigg Agriculture coordinates supply from contracted sharefarmers and a wider select farmer group throughout the North Island. 

All livestock produced for Brownrigg Agriculture programmes is farmed to exacting standards in terms of animal husbandry and traceability.

Brownrigg Agriculture Livestock spans a range of enterprises, foremost of which are:

Lamb Finishing

Over 500,000 lambs are supplied annually to processors who export predominantly chilled product to world markets.

Wagyu Cattle Breeding

The Wagyu Breeders Ltd herd of 5,000 Wagyu cows, along with extensive breeding of first-cross Wagyu from Friesian dairy cows, provides 7,000 calves per annum for supply to live export markets and our joint venture Firstlight Wagyu beef business.

Cattle

4,000 cattle, primarily bulls and steers, are supplied to meat processing companies annually.

Livestock Export

As part of our Challenge Livestock Partnership joint venture business, up to 10,000 predominantly Friesian heifers annually are farmed by Brownrigg Agriculture or accumulated on group farms for pre-export work.

Throughout our livestock business we have a strong focus on the marketplace, and this has resulted in durable integrated market partnerships in each enterprise.