{"id":514218,"date":"2026-03-02T16:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T16:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514218\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T16:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T16:47:13","slug":"tasmanias-largest-lamb-exporter-loses-biggest-market-in-the-wake-of-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514218\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasmania’s largest lamb exporter loses biggest market in the wake of Iran war"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tasmanian lamb exporter has lost access to its biggest market while the US and Israel continue striking Iran.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the US and Israeli governments launched “pre-emptive” attacks on the nation in what international lawyers have called an “illegal act of aggression”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tasmanian Quality Meats (TQM) in Cressy, northern Tasmania, has been rocked by the escalation.<\/p>\n

For the first time the business has been forced to cancel consignments.<\/p>\n

As Tasmania’s largest exporter of lamb, TQM sends about 4,000 lambs to the Middle East region each week, worth around $800,000.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jake Oliver says processors are being hit by extra costs as the risks of overseas trading escalate. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n

Speaking on the ABC’s Country Hour, TQM’s managing director Jake Oliver said a large amount of product was “sitting in Melbourne” and transiting countries and that there was no choice but for the business to cut its losses and bring it all back to Australia.<\/p>\n

“It was either get it back here on site and deal with it, or it would end up going off and being discarded on the mainland or overseas,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It was the only option we had.”Live: Trump says US will ‘avenge’ fallen troops but more deaths ‘likely’<\/a><\/p>\n

Donald Trump has said he would be talking to Iranian leaders following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Follow live.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got to basically get everything all together in Melbourne get it sent back down to Tassie, reprocess everything into frozen specs and put it in the freezer, which will be sold for a much lower rate.<\/p>\n

“So yeah, bit of a finance hit there.<\/p>\n

“We send the chilled lambs there, we send a lot of frozen mutton and things like that by sea, across that market, so not having it will certainly affect our business.”<\/p>\n

Shipping costs spike<\/p>\n

Mr Oliver said costs were rising with the risk of trading in the region.<\/p>\n

“We had an email come through this morning from a shipping company stating that, starting today, there’ll be a US$3,500 charge, which is about AUD$5,000, on all 40-foot containers heading into the Middle East region,” he said.<\/p>\n

But this morning, US President Donald Trump suggested the conflict could continue for weeks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Rows<\/p>\n

Jake Oliver says Tasmanian Quality Meats will freeze the lamb once it returns. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)<\/p>\n

“We’ll just cut back, let the dust settle a little bit and see where we’re at. Everyone’s in the same boat,” Mr Oliver said.<\/p>\n

TasFarmers Livestock Committee head George Shae also told the Country Hour it was “hard to gauge” how events would unfold.<\/p>\n

“It’s concerning what’s going on, but it’s too early to tell where all of this is going to go,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Certainly product that is flown is going to be disrupted, and there still is quite a bit of product that gets air-freighted into the Middle East \u2014 a lot of high-end product \u2014 so that will be disrupted for quite some time by the look of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tasmanian lamb exporter has lost access to its biggest market while the US and Israel continue striking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2490,43,257248,257252,257251,257247,12241,257255,257254,44,257250,257249,41,39,42,40,257256,257253],"class_list":{"0":"post-514218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-iran-bombing","11":"tag-israel-iran","12":"tag-jake-oliver","13":"tag-lamb-export","14":"tag-middle-east","15":"tag-middle-east-exports","16":"tag-middle-east-trade","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-tasfarmers","19":"tag-tasmanian-quality-meats","20":"tag-top-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topnews","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-tqm","25":"tag-us-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}