Simon Quilty

Global Agritrends

Simon graduated with a Bachelor of Melbourne University Agricultural Science in 1987.He first worked as a research officer with the Victorian Farmers Federation Pastoral Group for four years. It brought farmers and the meat processing sector together in Victoria with initiatives like establishing a direct shipping service from Victoria to Japan to open up the Victorian chilled beef market in Japan.

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Simon moved into the meat trading and processing sector in 1990, working for Louis Dreyfus Australia for four years - spending part of his training in North America - when LDC was Australia’s largest single buyer of export beef. Simon’s career moved to ConAgra Foods at the time, owned by Australian Meat Holdings and DR Johnston, where he worked for seven years and once again resided overseas - his involvement with meat trading remained until 2010 with his own trading company. It established its brand name in various countries.

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In recent years, Simon has moved into the risk management sector and developed derivatives and meat swaps used by companies in North America and Australia to manage price risk in processed meat and livestock. Simon spent two years working as a consultant with FC Stone in starting up the livestock and meat desk and, in 2015,co-founded the Southern Aurora Group.

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In 2020, Simon established Global AgriTrends Downunder, the Australian arm of the US parent company owned by Brett Stuart.

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Global AgriTrends Down Under offers a variety of updates starting with our Monday Thoughts for the Week podcast. In addition to the podcast each week will be an additional article or update, as well as regular webcasts and a monthly newsletter.

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Today he provides detailed weekly updates for subscribers as a meat and livestock analyst also brokers swaps on behalf of large financial institutions in Australia and the US and brokers physical meat products around the world (namely from Australia, NZ and India), working with large international companies that have interests in China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the US.

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In 2022, Simon was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, and in 2023 spent three months overseas doing this research. The project aimed to look at methane reduction schemes in the livestock sector worldwide to reward farmers for lowering methane. He travelled to 11 countries, including the US, Canada, Portugal, Spain, and Gerrmany. Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Ireland, and New Zealand. His report findings were released in December 2024.