Mr Thorp was appointed chief executive of Lean Meats Ltd last October, after six years as general manager of operations for food ingredient processing and marketing company Cedenco Foods in Gisborne. Before that, he managed the Alliance Group's Pukeuri plant for three years.
Mr Thorp said it was an exciting time to be involved with the meat industry. Farmers were getting a satisfactory return and the placement of New Zealand lamb in the market was well positioned, something he had seen first-hand during a recent visit to the United States and Europe.
But there were still a "hell of a lot" of challenges, including ensuring it was a sustainable and profitable industry. The dramatic decline in capital stock and lambs had to be stopped, Mr Thorp said.
He would like to see succession planning on sheep and beef farms to encourage younger family members to continue the tradition.
"Keeping pastoral farmers in the activity of producing high-quality heavy lamb is our focus. No-one in this industry ever attempts to predict the future but, at the moment, the short to medium term looks promising."
Born and raised in Oamaru, Mr Thorp has been involved in the primary sector all his working life, shearing, fencing and mustering after leaving school before starting work in the casings department at the Pukeuri freezing works in 1986.
He worked his way through various positions (taking an 18-month break at one stage to manage Abco Meats before returning).
He enjoyed his time at Alliance before taking a broader role in Gisborne. Moving north with his family, wife Lee-Anne and their two sons, was a big decision but it was an opportunity to do something different and live in a different part of New Zealand. He and his family enjoyed the experience, not just the work, but also living on the North Island's East Coast and the people they met, he said.
They moved to Havelock North when Mr Thorp took up the new position with Lean Meats. Hastings-based Lean Meats is a specialist heavy lamb producer and marketer, supplying lamb into the North American and European markets under the Atkins Ranch brand.
The company was the brainchild of John Atkins and Phil Guscott back in 1988. Backed by 105 Wairarapa and Manawatu farmers, it operated for the first 10 years as Heavy Lambs Trust, before Lean Meats was established. Its formation came out of suppliers' wanting more return for their livestock, and Mr Thorp described Mr Guscott and Mr Atkins as "quite entrepreneurial" in their thinking.
Lean Meats' business strategy of aligning suppliers to the market with sustainable returns had underpinned the business activity for several years, and was as important today as it was 24 years ago.
"We're the New Zealand story of farming safe, wholesome food, along with creating strong brands for our suppliers to participate in and work with in North America and Europe.
"In many parts of the world, lamb is regarded as a delicacy and we are pushing our heavy lamb products to the high-end market opportunities; that helps to hold its value," Mr Thorp said.
Lean Meats has more than 1020 farmer suppliers - 450 in the North Island and 570 in the South Island - along with a plant in Oamaru which can process up to 2000 heavy lambs and 80-100 beef a day.
In 2006, the company bought Abco Meats (Oamaru) Ltd, which had gone into receivership. Abco Meats was set up with mainly farmer and butcher shareholders to buy, upgrade and operate the former Oamaru borough abattoirs in the 1970s. It was acquired to give the company "geographical spread" and a large amount of money had been invested in the past five years.
It now employed 180 staff and its contribution to the North Otago economy should not be underestimated, Mr Thorp said.
There were plans for the growth of the Oamaru business - which was important for the ongoing viability of Lean Meats as a whole - and the company was looking to increase production at the plant from 2012.
It was hoping to add another slaughter shift over the main summer season and a contract had recently been signed to toll process beef for the Dubai-based Middle East supermarket chain Spinneys, in conjunction with North Island meat processing company Ovation.
Lean Meats saw the plant's future as a multispecies, small footprint, processing facility operating 52 weeks of the year and supplying domestic and international markets.
While there were still challenges, the plant had certainly "turned the corner" and was now gathering momentum, thanks to the staff who work at and manage the operations from livestock through to the final product, Mr Thorp said.