How Elders' Lisa Hewitt sees the future of the Northern livestock industry

Lisa Hewitt is the Managing Director for Elders Queensland and Northern Territory, a role she took up last year after a number of years in the ANZ commercial and agribusiness team in North Queensland. She joined APlus News at Beef 2024.

Aplus News: Lisa, What's the big vision for the business? 

It's interesting you ask that question. A lot of people have been asking me where does Elders go from here. Because we're a 185-year-old company this year and we're so entwined in the fabric of rural Australia.

And I always talk about this, I grew up as a kid of the Pink Shirt family. But we're a really diversified business. So we do everything from real estate to raw product to insurance to financial services. And then I guess the traditional agency model across cattle, sheep and goats. So what I really see for Elders as we sort of move into our next 185 is taking all of those learnings that we've had.

Adding innovation into that and then teaching our people really how to deliver for what I call the whole of a customer. So we often think that a customer sells cattle through us or we think that they might do one real estate transaction through us. But in our customers, we're very lucky, we've got a huge customer base.

They're often multi-generational and there's lots of different people in that customer family that actually could use, I guess, that we can offer right through from. I was talking to someone the other day about a customer in which we sell their cattle for them and have done for many  years, and it was really pleasing to see one of their children, who was going off to use our Elders Real Estate team and finance broking home loan team to help them purchase their first property.

And so for me, that's the value that we add. We were very, very lucky to be Australia's most trusted agribusiness brand. And our people need to respect that and need to be able to deliver in all aspects of our customers' lives. 

APlus News: How do you see the agency model evolving then under this sort of new system?

I think the agency model's here to stay.

A lot of people say to me, Oh, you know, When will that run out? But it's interesting if we look at, say just mention home loan broking. If we look at that, two thirds of Australians actually use a home loan broker now to source their financing needs. And it's because we're so busy.

We're such a busy population nowadays. So we, you know, we've generally got both parents working or both parents are involved in the ag business. And we actually need, I believe, we're seeing that in certainly other industries like home loan broking. But we need that in agency and real estate as well.

We need that expertise to say, well, actually I've got something here that I need to move or sell or create a transaction and I need somebody to come in and do it. So for me, agency will evolve in the sense that if we can add true value to our customers, we will always remain really relevant and in fact will increase our relevancy. 

APlus News: What are some of the big issues that the northern livestock industry is facing and how does Elders sort of help in that way?  

So obviously last year we saw, and a couple of years ago as well, we saw the scare of Lumpy Skin Disease in the north and FMDs and always present risk.

I think overarchingly you know, we always talk about the benefits of being really close to some of our major international trading partners, but what comes with that is the biosecurity risk. So we need to remain vigilant to that, and that I think that will always be there and with technology and with improved government relations, improved education, I think that we can try and manage that risk as best as we can.

People always talk to me about. What's the risks of Northern Australia? And I say, well, what's the opportunity? I really like to talk about the opportunity instead. And so you know, if I think about what's going on across Queensland and Northern Territory, we're seeing you know cropping and cotton going in at Catherine, where people really value adding their businesses, the same things happening in the Northwest.

So it gives me great joy to drive along the northwest line between Townsville and Mount Isa and see forage sorghum and crops coming up. People actually getting the ability to value add their livestock more than they ever have before. So you know, opportunity exists everywhere. Still, we've got the tyranny of distance that will always be present.

But I think as our country matures and as we can invest more money, obviously in roads and accesses and ports, that will sort that.  

APlus News: You've got a diverse background, started in accounting, then you worked at ANZ, now you're at Elders. As you've gone through your career, what are the big trends you have seen in Australian Ag?

It's really interesting. I often laugh at this, when I was at boarding school they used to say to me, oh my god, I can't believe you're going to go home and work in your family business or work in ag. They were just absolutely appalled that my parents had spent all this money on me to go and work in ag.

But nowadays, one of the big trends we're seeing is actually people want to be involved in this industry. We're creating career paths for that was a big issue when I was younger there wasn't a great deal of career paths. They came in and they were either a stockman or a stockwoman.

And the, you know, the old model of the property owner and the staff existed. But as the industry builds out and we've got a lot more different businesses adding to that value chain and actually a lot more skill that we need to deliver the ag tech that we need, interact with our international partners, interact with our customers.

It's always a thing. All of this opportunity opens up for all these different skill sets. So that's a really big change for me. I guess the nation's overall attitude to careers and, and being involved in ag. And I think we're seeing a lot of, we've seen a lot of capital investment come into ag and we will continue to do, and that's not people think of capital investment as always foreigners.

It's not always foreigners. It's Australian companies saying, Hey, this is a really good long-term asset in which we can place some money, run a commodity business on top of it and obviously the flow on effects that they then get to use in terms of sustainability, offsets, etc for their very different businesses.

So I think it's for me, the trend is we're seeing this real connection, I think, back closer between what we would call the city and the country and people actually starting to really value all sorts of skill sets from the city and, and the agricultural history of Australia. And I think that's only great for the industry moving forward.

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