Australian export case study
Northern Territory company, Porosus Pty Ltd, is s Australia’s largest commercial producer of the Crocodylus Porosus (saltwater crocodile) and is producing some of the finest quality crocodile skins in the world.
 The company produced 8,000 first-grade skins last year, all going o to France to be made-up into exclusive accessories for leading fashion houses in Europe.
Established in 1981, the Porosus farm recently underwent a multi-million dollar infrastructure upgrade, and currently houses more than 40,000 animals.
The crocodiles are selected for culling when they are between three and four years old and up to 1.8m in length.
The skin of the Crocodylus Porosus is renowned for its small scale size and this species is devoid of osteoderms or ‘buttons’ – floating bones inside the belly skin - which reduce the quality of other finished leathers.
Species of Crocodilians from other parts of the world, such as Alligators, Caimans and Freshwater Crocodiles, have varying percentages of osteoderms within their belly skin, which reduces their value in comparision to Porosus.
Difficult and dangerous
Farming the saltwater crocodile is difficult and dangerous, as the porosus are the most aggressive of the crocodile species.
Juvenile crocodiles have to be housed in specially designed compounds to minimize stress which can result in damage to the animal’s skin – with the older crocodiles being housed in specifically designed finishing pens.
The crocodile eggs are harvested by helicopter.
"We work closely with the aboriginal traditional owners of the land," said Porosus Director, Mick Burns.
"We use helicopters and GPS positioning to locate the nests, at times, delicately balancing on the floats of the helicopters we carefully and slowly collect the eggs – marking each individual egg as it is harvested – forever mindful of imminent dangers.
"We collected eggs from over 400 nests this season.
"It’s not the easiest way to earn a living."
He said that farming high volumes of perfect skins is always a challenge and added that exporting is also a challenge – of a different kind.
"We have to export if we want to grow the business."
Austrade has assisted Porosus in a number of ways.
"We received an Export Market Development Grant, which made quite a difference."
Mr Burns said that Darwin-based Austrade Export Adviser, Bernadette Eggington, had been particularly helpful in showing Porosus how to approach the export opportunities available in various markets.
Company information
Mick Burns, Director
Porosus Pty Ltd
Post Office Box 86
Palmerston NT 0831
Tel: +61 8 8988 1491
Fax: +61 9 8988 2001
Email: mick@biznt.com
Website: www.crocfarm.com.au
& www.4porosus.com
January 2008
www.austrade.gov.au/mediacentre
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