JSR’s pigs are sent trotting around the globe

JSR Genetics, based in Southburn near Driffield, provides UK and international pig producers with breeding stock and semen so they can maximise the output from their production facilities.

The last decade or so has been particularly challenging for the UK pig industry and international breeding stock sales, not least with two foot-and-mouth outbreaks. But a slowdown in the UK market saw JSR Genetics adopt an export-focused strategy, winning it a Queen’s Award for International Trade last year, its second such accolade.

Dr Grant Walling, MD of JSR Genetics, said: “The UK as a market is a relatively static market. If you go before foot-and-mouth in 2000 there were probably 900,000 sows in the UK. If you look at where we are now we are probably at about 450,000. The industry in probably the last 15 years has halved in our domestic market which from a business point of view is obviously extremely challenging.

“We obviously have to try and fight and ensure we increase our market share during that but it does mean we’ve been a lot more reliant on our international business to be able to pick up the slack.”

JSR Genetics, which employs 43 people, recorded a turnover of £7.2m in its 2008 financial year, with £821,000 of overseas business. In its 2012 financial year, turnover was £8.38m, with £3.03m of overseas business, and profits were £496,000.

JSR was started in 1957 by John Sykes Rymer, father of the current chairman Tim Rymer. The breeding business came some time later under the name of JSR Healthbred.

Since then it has made several strategic mergers and takeovers to become the company recognised since 2002 as JSR Genetics, part of the JSR Farming Group. JSR Farms, meanwhile, manages 9,000 acres all within a 20-mile radius of its East Yorkshire base.

Dr Walling said: “Rather than (JSR Genetics) just being a sales company, increasingly we are a service company because not only do we sell the pigs to people, but quite often we would run programmes on their farms, on their facilities so they are getting the best out of our products.”

The pigs are flown via aeroplane, using pallets designed for the purpose, to their destinations, with an upcoming shipment planned for Vietnam. When they arrive at their destination, they are set up as the nucleus herds to produce sufficient animals. Dr Walling said: “It’s very much focused on what we can do with breeding in terms of meeting their requirements.

“To give you an idea of why they are using our pigs rather than using something locally, in for example China, and trying to improve it a little bit is that our pigs perhaps have six litters during their lifetime. We would expect them to produce 80 pigs in those six litters on average. If they took their local pigs they would be looking at maybe eight, nine pigs per litter.

“Genetic selection as Darwin demonstrated is quite a slow process. Any changes occur very slowly over a period of time and therefore because of the work John Rymer did in the 70s in selecting the best pigs and bringing them back through and keeping the best genetics, the animal we’ve ended up with is a lot, lot better than what they’ve had in China where they have basically not implemented the same sort of rigour to their programmes, so their pigs perhaps look like ours did in the 50s or 60s.”

This year, JSR Genetics has signed a new franchise deal with a group, based around the Beijing area in China, its biggest growth market. There are around 100 million breeding sows in the world, around half of which are located in China, said Dr Walling. “The challenge with China is a lot of those are privately owned with people owning one, two or three animals rather than large commercial businesses.

“But the proportion in private ownership versus the large commercial operations has started to change quite significantly as the cities get larger, people don’t have space to keep pigs themselves and more professional businesses move in.”

JSR Genetics has also seen significant interest and investment in pig farms in Russia, while it is keen to also focus on Vietnam due to its large sow population.