Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Veeam after calling the 'freeze' script was doing some unnecessary processing so delaying the VMWare snapshot and the subsequent call to 'thaw' script.

Thanks. That seems to have done the trick.
pri_ref.value
has
'\x1c\x01SERVERA.FOO.BAR.ORG/STAGE\x14\x01SERVERA.foo.bar.org|2188\t\x01Primary\x08\x01Active\x15\x01172.31.33.69|1972\x15\x01SERVERA.foo.bar.org|1972'

The field separator appears to be \x01. However there is smattering of 
\x1c
\x14
\t
\x08
\x15

Not sure why there are these hex characters?

Thanks.

I missed that parameter

I'll give it a try