Leader Products, a solely owned and operated Australian agricultural supplier business, reached a commercial agreement with Australian Wool Innovation to produce polypropylene mulesing clips.

Under the deal formalised last week, Leader Products will license and sell the AWI trialled and approved clips through trained mulesing contractors, in a bid to ensure correct application.

Bruce Dumbrell, managing director of Leader Products which operates extensively through the Australian livestock identification market, said getting the clips on right was the only true way of guaranteeing the product would work.

“We have 40 trained mulesing contractors who will be allocated clips according to various property identification codes,” Mr Dumbrell said.

“It is important we have a record, so we can track any faults back to the contractors responsible for putting them on.”

With current surgical mulesing costing about 60-70 cents per lamb, contractors asking $500 a day and capable of doing 800-1000 lambs a day, Mr Dumbrell is adamant that the new clips will be competitively priced.

“We are targeting 50-60c per lamb, plus the same contractor costs with clips priced from 60-70c each – 70c if people choose to go biodegradable.

“In this price structure we can basically match Trisulfen which is 80c per dose per lamb.”

For full report and related stories, don't miss Stock & Land, October 23.