DAMsmart, Asia Pacific’s largest, fully established and dedicated audio-visual digitisation services bureau, today announced the launch of its Film and Video Tape Digitisation Services in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace. DAMsmart’s services are the first of its kind in AWS Marketplace.

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalogue that makes it easy for organisations to discover, procure, entitle, provision, and govern third-party software.

Facing technology obsolescence and media degradation, all forms of media are now at risk of permanent loss within the next few years if urgent action is not taken to convert media on videotapes, audiotapes and film into data. Media organisations facing these challenges can now consume DAMsmart’s services through their AWS account and take advantage of DAMsmart’s knowledge of AWS’s media services. DAMsmart has extensive expertise in preparing analogue media files for specific cloud-based media asset management (MAM) solutions.

DAMsmart General Manager, Joe Kelly, said, “DAMsmart is the largest commercial film, tape and audio to digital conversion service provider in the Southern Hemisphere specifically equipped to deliver the highest quality digitisation of legacy audio-visual formats. From a single tape or film to the largest broadcast library, we are experts at ensuring your legacy content retains value and remains accessible in the 21st century. Our customers can now access all of DAMsmart’s services via the AWS Marketplace, making it even easier and more convenient to digitise and protect your most valuable media assets.”

With offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Auckland and Kuala Lumpur, DAMsmart is able to process any form of videotape, audiotape or motion picture film and convert these physical assets into high quality digital assets.

Since 2007, DAMsmart has processed and digitised over one million audio-visual media carriers for public and private sector organisations within Australia, the Asia Pacific region, and beyond.

DAMsmart also provides media organisations and collection owners with expert consultancy services for collection assessment, preservation strategies, workflow design and implementation and monetisation opportunities.

DAMsmart’s key service offerings are available now via the AWS Marketplace:

• Up conversion from SD to HD and higher

• Restoration of legacy content in any form to maximise monetisation opportunities for your collection

• Quality assessment and reporting

• Localisation and delivery services 

• Metadata customisation capabilities to ensure compatibility to client MAM platform

• Creation of rich media archives to suit any requirements

• Data-migration for media specific collections from legacy and current generation linear tape-open (LTO) formats to cloud or disc storage

Also read Small Business Answers guide to Video Production and Editing

In its Q1 Global Beef Quarterly, the specialist agribusiness bank says while global beef prices remain high – with cattle prices across most key beef-producing regions at their highest levels in five years – cost pressures are building in the supply chain. And this will test the willingness of consumers to continue to pay ‘top dollar’ for beef.

“Over the past two years, retail beef prices have been phenomenal,” the report says, largely driven by strong consumer demand and some supply shocks.

“In Q4 2021, beef retail prices in the US were 23 per cent higher than the five-year average and in China, they were 24 per cent above the five-year average,” it says.

Consumer ‘demand pull’ for Global Beef

Much of this increase in prices has been caused by “demand-pull”, Rabobank senior animal protein analyst Angus Gidley-Baird said, driven by increased consumer appetite for beef due to factors including lockdown restrictions, additional disposable incomes from Covid stimulus packages and (in the case of China and African swine fever in pork) limitations on the availability of alternative proteins.

“With beef supply unable to keep up, the increase in demand has created an imbalance in the market and, as a result, beef prices have lifted,” he said.

In many cases, Mr Gidley-Baird said, the increases in retail beef prices have been among the largest in history. And, while beef prices continued to increase through 2021, prices for many other proteins remained stable or contracted.

“While price rises in beef have been dramatic, the fact they have been largely caused by consumer demand has meant they have been accommodated.  That is, consumers have been willing to pay higher prices to continue consuming beef,” he said.

Inflationary pressures on Global Beef

However, inflationary pressures are building in the beef supply chain, the report warns, with labour, freight and energy costs among the largest to see increases, along with the feed.

A number of these cost increases will be permanent and need to be “accommodated” and passed on into retail pricing, Mr Gidley-Baird said.

“Some of the cost pressures – such as freight, energy and feed – are cyclical and over time are expected to decline, allowing for some easing in 2022.  However, a number of cost increases – those associated with labour and sustainability for example – will be permanent and will need to be accommodated within the supply chain,” he said.

“Further increases in beef prices run the risk of consumers substituting other proteins or reducing their overall consumption. And we are starting to see signs they might be reaching their limit.”

Russia Ukraine

The Q1 report says the Russia Ukraine conflict is not expected to have a major impact on global beef markets, given Russia has a less prominent role in markets compared with five years ago. Russia only accounts for approximately five per cent of global beef imports with its major suppliers being Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.

However, indirect impacts are possible.

“Increased energy, fertiliser and feed costs as a result of the conflict could all impact the beef supply chain and, with Russia and Ukraine accounting for 29 per cent of global wheat exports, any trade embargoes could pressure feed prices,” Mr Gidley-Baird said.

“The general uncertainty – along with slower global growth and inflation – could also see an erosion of consumer confidence which may result in an easing of consumer demand for beef.”

Australia

For Australia, the report says, “encouraging rains” across central, northern and eastern Australia in the first two months of 2022 will support cattle production in the largest producing states.

“After a number of dry years in northern Australia, we expect these rains to stimulate restocking and herd rebuilding, adding further producer demand to an already strong cattle market,” Mr Gidley-Baird said. “Such restocking will also support increased production in the years to come.”

Australian cattle prices remain strong, supported by ongoing producer demand for restocking, coupled with the limited availability of cattle, the report says.

Cattle processing has had a slow start for the year, with Omicron cases in the community impacting the labour force.

“For the first five weeks of 2022, east coast weekly cattle slaughter in Australia was nine per cent below the same period last year and 40 per cent below the five-year average,” Mr Gidley-Baird said.

Australian beef exports ended 2021 down 15 per cent on 2020 volumes, the report said.  The largest declines were to the US (down 31 per cent), China (down 25 per cent) and Japan (down 13 per cent).  Volumes lifted however to South Korea (up three per cent).

Live exports followed a similar trend – down 27 per cent overall, with volumes to Indonesia down 13 per cent and to Vietnam down 44 per cent.

Payments innovator QuickFee has expanded its business specifically for franchise operations, now enabling franchisees to get paid upfront while giving their customers the option to buy now and pay later using instalments with Franchise Payment Services .

The Franchise Payment Services BNPL solution, which can be white labelled, enables a range of flexible payments of up to 12 monthly instalments and represents a convenient way for franchisees to accept debit and credit card payments.

It helps franchisees grow their business by offering more payment flexibility and additional time to pay for consumers using their services.

The move follows QuickFee’s recent partnership with Jim’s Pay Plan, enabling QuickFee to offer its solution to Jim’s Group – Australia’s largest franchising family.

According to industry data, Australia’s $184 billion franchise segment comprises 1,344 networks, including over 98,000 individual franchised outlets employing more than 598,000 people.

The QuickFee solution looks to capitalise on this market by offering a simple QR code-driven payment gateway with no new hardware, software or customer application required, ensuring that franchise businesses can offer flexible payment plans to their customers very quickly.

Consumers can use the service to pay over four, six, nine or 12 months, via QR code, invoice or quote link, text to pay, or via computer, tablet or phone.

Bruce Coombes, QuickFee Australia’s Managing Director, said with the increasing awareness of BNPL options across the economy and higher demand from the franchise sector, it made sense to offer franchise businesses a tailored option for their specific needs.

“Our new Franchise Payment Services business is a strategic way for franchisees to expand their offering to consumers,” he said.

“This is well-suited to larger purchases compared to traditional BNPL products, and gives consumers confidence because it uses an already-established payment method they are familiar with, but lets them pay over time.”

QuickFee CEO Eric Lookhoff said: “Franchising is a great way for businesses to grow quickly, accessing new customers with existing brand recognition. At QuickFee, we tailored our payment solution to help franchisees increase sales, enjoy higher average transaction values, and improve customer loyalty. The franchising sector continues to expand rapidly, and we look forward to helping a wide range of businesses grow by offering the easy, fast, and secure payment solutions their customers demand.”

See Small Business Answers Guide to BNPL

As part of NSW Small Business Month and to celebrate International Women’s Day, Smartpay will be hosting an online facilitated Q&A webinar with one of Australia’s leading entrepreneurs Keira Rumble, founder and CEO of Krumbled Food

Deeply passionate about living a healthy and happy life, Keira is on a mission to truly revolutionise the health food, wellbeing and beauty industries worldwide.

“The personal and business challenges Keira has overcome will be intriguing and insightful,” says Peter Thomas, Chief Customer and People Officer at Smartpay. “We’re looking forward to learning more of Keira’s story on 7 March. The Krumbled Foods brand aligns with our own at Smartpay as we’re both solution-driven, value-adding organisations.”

In her early 20s, Keira was diagnosed as pre-diabetic (insulin resistant) and was forced to quickly change the way she was living and what she was eating. Disappointed by the lack of transparency and the availability of tasty, low sugar snacks, Keira decided she needed to do something about it, and so Krumbled Foods was born. Eight months after the launch of Beauty Bites in Australia, they became available in Coles Supermarkets and Priceline Pharmacies nationwide.

Smartpay’s In Conversation with Keira Rumble Q&A webinar will be feature Keira discussing how she built her brand and how she too started as a small business with important tips, tricks and challenges she faced along the way.

EVENT DETAILS:

Date: Monday 7 March 2022

Time: 12:30pm

ONLINE WEBINAR: Please register here.