Exporting Smarter: How Adopting Digital Can Reinvigorate New Zealand’s Meat Industry
New Zealand’s red-meat industry has long been known for quality and reliability. But in a world where markets move faster than ever, those strengths alone aren’t enough to ensure the profitability and longevity of our country’s position in this competitive market.
As BusinessDesk’s Riley Kennedy recently highlighted in his series “Rare Returns”, the sector faces key challenges: the need to export smarter, build structure for sustainable scale, and address processor capacity and procurement demand mismatch.
At Nui, we believe digital trade is central to addressing this. When technology takes care of the complexity, like pricing visibility, documentation, real-time inventory views and order updates, exporters can focus on what really drives value: getting the right product in front of the right buyer at the right time.
Nui’s platforms are built specifically for the realities of agri-commodity trade and give exporters real-time visibility, pricing transparency, and seamless integration with existing systems. It’s a proven model in dairy: In New Zealand Open Country, Synlait, and most recently Fonterra each use Nui platforms to strengthen their export strategy, not to mention our much wider international adoption by large players in the U.S. and EU dairy markets.
Now, the same opportunity exists for red meat, a market which holds many export similarities to dairy. ANZCO Foods, one of New Zealand’s most innovative meat companies, is leading the way in embedding digital trade within its operations. Their early success in digitising domestic trade has created a strong foundation for export growth, and they’re focusing on digital options to improve price transparency and ensure the best return on their meat supply.
This kind of leadership by ANZCO matters. It shows how the sector can move from tradition to transformation, from trading on experience to trading on data, insight, and speed.
Here’s what exporting smarter in meat looks like in practice:
Trade faster. Seamless integrations remove manual re-entry, cutting time, cost, and risk from export operations.
Increase buyer-initiated trade. Empowering buyers with real-time product and data to plan production with confidence.
Capture true market value. Digital tenders establish competitive, data-driven pricing, removing friction from negotiation and improving return.
Explore and scale efficiently. Test demand for new markets or speciality products without heavy investment.
Stay in control. Real-time inventory visibility and smarter coordination help processors match supply to global demand, reduce bottlenecks, and optimise capacity.
Expand market reach. Identify and engage new buyers faster and pivot quickly as consumer trends and regulatory expectations evolve.
These aren’t abstract benefits. They’re tangible tools helping exporters work smarter in a volatile market, tools that make New Zealand’s goal to double export value in the next decade feel within reach.
The success stories emerging across both dairy and meat show what’s possible when innovation and industry work together. At Nui, we’re proud to support that momentum, helping New Zealand exporters trade strategically, build scale, and strengthen our reputation as a premium supplier to the world.
Because exporting smarter isn’t just about individual company returns, it’s how we secure the future of one of New Zealand’s most important industries.
