Geoff Tancred: an extraordinary life

Had it not been for the coronavirus strictures on public gatherings, the aisles would have been packed, the tributes would have flowed and the air filled with reminiscences of a remarkable man and his extraordinary achievements.

In the latter part of the 20th century Geoff Tancred orchestrated the transformation of what was initially a modest, family abattoir business into a massive multi-site meat processing operation spanning the eastern states. At the same time he amassed a portfolio of grazing properties that made the Tancred family second only in Queensland to the state government in terms of land ownership.

Those who knew Geoff Tancred speak mostly of his interpersonal skills, his ability to relate to people, recognise their skills, earn their respect and loyalty and gain their commitment to the betterment of the business.

All very useful qualities for a game as tough as the meat industry so perhaps there was something in the genes considering the family can trace its involvement in butchering and wholesaling well back into the 1800s.

Geoff was born with twin sister Diana (Nan) at Casino in 1935 to parents Owen (Bun) and Mabel Tancred.

At this time Geoff's father and uncles Harry, George, Arnold and Jim were active in the meat game in Sydney having formed Tancred Brothers in 1922.

By 1930 they had built a meatworks at South Grafton from which they supplied meat into the Sydney market by way of ice-box rail trucks.

Success at Grafton led to a grander vision of slaughtering in the country closer to the source of the livestock and rail transporting the carcases to the major metropolitan centres of Sydney and Melbourne.

In 1938 they opened Bourke meatworks, a natural choice in that era before large-scale mechanised road transport as it was a confluence of stock routes serving north-western NSW and south-western Qld.

It fell to Geoff's father to run the business in Bourke and the family moved there in 1938.

Geoff completed his early schooling at Bourke before being sent to Shore School at North Sydney where he completed his leaving certificate in 1952. Returning to Bourke he immersed himself in the family business and took a keen interest in the livestock buying side.

With guidance from people like Ern Brook, Tancred's principal livestock buyer, Geoff was quick to learn and soon moved on to Rockhampton in order to source central Qld cattle for Bourke and their newly opened meatworks at Beaudesert.

With their presence in Queensland increasing, management shifted to the Brisbane suburb of Morningside but misfortune was not far away.

Ill health caused Harry Tancred to resign as chairman of Tancred Bros in 1959 and Harry's brother Arnold took control. He oversaw the family's initial foray into the US beef market but sadly fell ill and passed away in 1963.

Geoff, his brother Barry and cousin Bede initially took joint control but by 1965 Geoff was at the helm as chairman and managing director of Tancred Bros.

The business did well out of the US market in the late 1960s and what followed was a period of expansion of the abattoir business and acquisition of grazing properties.

One person close to that activity was long-serving senior executive and company director Graham Flynn.

Graham passed away some years ago but in 2012, when I last spoke to him, he reflected on the factors that ultimately determined which of the acquisitions would prove to be winners and which would not.

Mt Isa was one of the latter. Part of the rationale for Mt Isa was the supply implications from the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign (BTEC).

"We were buying a lot of cattle for very little money, but also very little weight." He recalled the early sentiment, "All BTEC cattle this week, we'll make a fortune." But that week's trading ended up losing money.

The problem was the cost to operate as that week's kill averaged about 130kg and that typified the biggest problem overall for Mt Isa - lack of continuity of cattle that were profitable to kill.

In contrast, Graham said the formula that worked was big throughput coupled with low cost to operate and Beaudesert was the prime example.

"The advantage that bestowed was the ability to go in any direction, north or south, when cattle were scarce and be able to outbid the local operators who faced higher costs to operate."

By the early 1980s Tancred Bros abattoirs were slaughtering around 450,000 head a year and as such were up in the major league of Australian meat processing.

But dark clouds were forming and for a combination of reasons the business was forced to divest assets, initially the portfolio of grazing properties.

Around the same time, excess processing capacity was recognised as a severe threat to the future wellbeing of the wider industry.

A joint venture initiative predicated on rationalising capacity suited Tancreds at the time and in combination with FJ Walker, Smorgon and Metro Meat they became part of a new mega entity Australia Meat Holdings in 1986.

There was no shortage of leadership talent from the combined ranks of the companies concerned but it was Geoff Tancred who was chosen as inaugural chairman.

The flagship Beaudesert plant was ultimately decommissioned and Tancreds withdrew from AMH in 1990.

With assets that had been withheld from the AMH consortium, some smaller acquisitions and service arrangements, Geoff formed an alliance with the Ibbotson family and for a period they successfully traded as Northern Meat Group.

Another alliance with Kerry Packer and the formation of Consolidated Meat Group followed with acquisition of Lakes Creek meatworks at Rockhampton from Smorgon.

Departure from CMG in 1999 effectively marked the end of a stellar, multi-generational involvement in meat processing for the Tancred name.

Looking back on that era and reflecting on the life of Geoff Tancred, Wayne Herrod, who started as a 16-year-old on the gut barrow at Cape River and subsequently worked for Geoff for 13 years, perhaps summed it up best.

"We were always proud to refer to ourselves as Tancred men."

Thanks to Ross Tancred for family history information with further background drawn from Stephen Martyn's Australian meat industry anthology "World on a Plate".