Strategic Alliances and Marketing Cooperatives: a Lamb Industry Case Study

Producer cooperatives and strategic alliances could assist lamb producers and market efficiency by improving price signals through product grading. Opportunities exist for first and second cross lamb producers to achieve price premiums by forming intersectoral linkages with processors/wholesalers and retailers. Producer cooperatives enable producers to supply consistent quantities of high quality lambs to satisfy the market requirements of the wholesalers/retailers within an alliance. Alternatively, opportunistic lamb suppliers who are constrained by environmental or cost factors may not be able to derive similar price premiums