Want to make more than $500,000 profit a year? Well, just build a 4000-head sheep feedlot.
That's the advice of Ashley Olsson, chairman of Clipex which produces a range of fencing, stockyards and livestock handling equipment.
Mr Olsson said he had crunched the numbers with input from feedlot builders, lamb feeders and animal health experts and discovered producers could commission a turn-key 4000-head feedlot costing around $625,000 and pay it off in three years or sooner.
And the NSW Government wanted to loan producers up to $1 million at 2.5 per cent interest rate through its $1 billion Farm Innovation Fund to build on-farm infrastructure as part of its 2019-20 emergency drought package, he said.
As of March 1 the fund still contained $486m of available funding.
Mr Olsson told a feeding sheep for profit field day at Canimbla sheep feedlot near Cowra that his estimates of net profit from the feedlot were conservative.
"Right now we are living in a blessed country where our government has worked out the best way to double output of protein out of this country because that's what the world is demanding," he said.
"By 2050 there will be a 50pc increase in demand for protein around the world.
"Australia is at the tip of the spear because of who we are and what we've done and we are one of the best countries at doing it (producing meat) .
Mr Olsson conceded he was a salesman but told his audience he was passionate about improving the industry and sheep producers would never have a better opportunity to put "coin in the bank".
He said all the data and science to support an application for funding for a sheep feedlot was freely available.
"We can make some serious money and it's not that difficult," he said.
For around $625,000 a farmer could have a fully-operational feedlot in about six weeks capable of finishing 16,000 lambs or more a year and returning annual net profit of more than $500,000.
"We can make some serious money and it's not that difficult, it's hard to believe, it looks too good (to be true)," he said.
Mr Olsson started Clipex in 2007 after he came up with an idea for a steel fence post with clips to quickly attach wire and netting while managing the family farm at Goulburn on the NSW Southern Tablelands.
For the past 12 years he has lived in China where he owns a factory which produces the Clipex range.
The company now employs almost 60 people in Australia.
Vernon Graham
Former editor of The Land, former Fairfax Media Agricultural Editor
Former editor of The Land, former Fairfax Media Agricultural Editor
