New ideas to benefit Fieldays buyers

Barry Quayle (left) and Lloyd Downing are hopeful farmers will get out their chequebooks. Picture / Amos Chapple

Organisers of Fieldays 2006 hope spending at the agricultural event will at least match last year's record levels, despite a big dip in projected rural incomes.

This year's Fieldays - from June 14 to 17 at Mystery Creek, near Hamilton - follows ANZ Bank predictions that gross pastoral farming incomes will drop 20 per cent this season.

While the bank expected pastoral incomes could rebound by up to 20 per cent next season, chief economist Cameron Bagrie felt rural chequebooks might not start reopening until about March next year.

With more than 122,000 visitors at last year's Fieldays, sales and orders were estimated at just under $157 million - up $37 million or 30 per cent on the previous year.

Sales and orders are believed to have hit $291 million, once event-related figures within six months of Fieldays are taken into account, again a 30 per cent ($68 million) increase.

"That was a dramatic ramp-up," said general manager Barry Quayle, adding that the increase was across all exhibitors.

For some businesses, Fieldays-related sales and orders represent a major part of their annual turnover and any drop in spending would be a worry.

But Quayle was optimistic domestic spending at this year's event would not be badly affected by lower rural incomes.

He said 15 to 20 years ago spending at Fieldays tended to track what was happening in the wider rural sector.

But since the 1990s, spending could go against wider trends. People had tended to shift out of a "siege mentality" in tough times and recognise they still needed to invest in new ideas for the future.

Fieldays chairman and Morrinsville dairy farmer Lloyd Downing said: "If we can do the same amount of business this year as what we did last year I'd be quite rapt."

Underpinning his and Quayle's optimism is an 8 per cent increase in exhibition space taken up this year. Exhibitor numbers will be up to around 1000, operating from about 1450 sites.

International exhibitors, up 10 per cent to 15 per cent, are coming from Australia, Britain, the United States, Italy, Russia and New Caledonia.

About $20.9 million in export deals was done at last year's event.

Quayle said Fieldays and its international business and visitor centre had introduced several new ideas to help buyers from overseas.

They will be able to wear a laminated ticket around their necks to help get more immediate attention from vendors; the tickets can also have specific areas of interest written on them.

The number of officials available to escort foreign buyers around the site has been increased, as has the number of international centre booths for doing business in.

Downing said Fieldays had been talking to companies such as Fonterra, Gallagher Group and Waikato Milking Systems about bringing their offshore distributors to future Fieldays and arranging side trips to see local farming operations.