With a combined market share approaching 50 per cent of existing semen sales the new business will be “emphatically number one - by a long way,” said GA chief executive Ray Johnson.

The Global Sires partners say the new business will offer Australian dairy farmers unprecedented access to the best home-grown and North American genetics.

WWS represents the interests of the two biggest artificial insemination co-operatives in the US and also has strong European alliances, bringing depth and international credibility to Global Sires, the partners say.

Dr Johnson said it was another major step along the path taken by GA from its previous position as a wholesaler dealing mainly with a small number of resellers, to today where they are a the biggest retail operator dealing directly with thousands of individual farmer clients.

Another feature of the new alliance was the strength of the WWS beef sector business where it markets a huge range of bulls from all major breeds.

“We see a really big opportunity in beef at a time when the use of artificial insemination is increasing.

“We want to marry that with our work in genomics and the chance to work closely with breed societies in genomic assessment and progeny testing programs,” Dr Johnson said.

Global Sires will absorb all staff previously working for WWS is Australia but Dr Johnson said the union was more about leveraging revenue than any cost saving synergies.

“Of course we want more efficiencies but the WWS staff are a small, high quality unit and we want them to continue doing what they do.”

The Global Sires catalogues will offer a complete range of domestic and imported sires but Dr Johnson said he didn’t anticipate significant export sales of Australian bulls, except perhaps into pasture-based industries like New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland where WWS had a well established marketing presence.

WWS in the US is a collaboration by the two largest artificial breeding co-operatives, Select Sires and Accelerated Genetics, both of which are highly involved with genomic research with access to some 10,000 bulls listed on US databases.

“I don’t think anyone yet can predict where this will take us and what will be required in the future so having that capability and the knowledge transfer in this joint venture will be an enormous advantage,” Dr Johnson said.