New direction gets Macro Meats's kangaroo skin in the game

Macro Meats founder Ray Borda outlined the company’s new focus for its kangaroo skins at the recent Agribusiness Australia SA luncheon in Adelaide.

He said the move was necessary after skins plunged to $3 following California’s decision to stop importing kangaroo products in 2015.

“Prices got up to about $18 in the lead-up to the 2006 Soccer World Cup because kangaroo leather was popular among sporting companies – it’s thin and lightweight but also strong, waterproof and breathable,” he said.

“Back then, we were culling about 10,000 kangaroos a week, so dropping to $3 has really hurt out bottom line.”

Mr Borda said it inspired the company to look into processing the kangaroo hides themselves.

“We were getting about $3/skin, yet the price of leather didn’t seem to drop, so we decided to start making our own leather products from the skins,” he said.

Chef’s aprons first came to mind, but Mr Borda said the plan was to extend the line to all hospitality fashion, including shoes.

“Leather is very fashionable in the hospitality industry,” he said. “We’re not the first company to make leather aprons, but our lightweight aprons weigh 200 grams and have all the attributes that a chef would look for – heatproof, waterproof, stain resistant, acid-proof.

“In hospitality, you are on your feet all day, so we also plan to make the most comfortable shoe out of kangaroo leather.”

Mr Borda said they wanted to reverse the tanning trend in Australia.

“There is hardly any tanning undertaken in this country because of environmental conditions and constraints on manufacturers,” he said.

Mr Borda said they already had a local tanning partner and planned to launch the aprons online later this year.​

“We will handle the product from the beginning to the end, because we want to control the story and perception of our product,” he said.

Macro Meats was established in 1987 by Mr Borda, a former pet store owner, who saw kangaroo meat’s potential for human consumption. 

He said the past 30 years had been “decades of fun and frustration” in exporting Australia’s most iconic animal, particularly changing the kangaroo’s profile from being a pet food to gourmet game meat.

“Every country we aimed to export to, the challenge to change that perception started again,” he said.

“Plus we were up against animal activists, who enjoyed trying to shut us down.”

But through transparency and establishing best practice infrastructure and responsible harvesting processes, Macro Meats today exports to 45 countries and serves more than 160,000 kilograms of premium quality kangaroo meat to Australian families each week.

“Yes it may be Australia’s most iconic animal, but there are 60 million of them,” said Mr Borda, who is also president of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia and chair of Food SA.

“They are an amazingly resilient animal and put a lot of pressure on the land.

“Macro Meats take is only 1.6m a year, sourced sustainably and ethically from the rangelands of Australia. 

“But we don’t want to be viewed as joey killers, so since early 2012, we have only culled male kangaroos.”

IN 30 years, Macro Meats has become the world’s largest retail distributor of Australian wild game meat, and exclusively supplies kangaroo meat to Australian supermarket chains.

Macro Meats founder Ray Borda said the company had a big advantage in that kangaroo was a great natural resource unique to Australia.

About 95 per cent of Macro Meat products is kangaroo, with some wild venison, rabbit, goat, boar and hare.

“In the early 2000s, there was 18 wild game export plants in existence, today there are only four and our company owns three,” he said. “That may sound like a monopoly, but we are very protective of what we do, particularly in our harvest methods, animal welfare, education and marketing.

“We have done a lot to get kangaroo meat to where it is today.”