Of all the export market destinations that the Ireland is pursuing, China is by far the most important.

There has been considerable success so far with dairy and pigmeat, and beef approval is anxiously awaited.

This moved a step closer with the factory inspections carried out by the Chinese inspection agency over the past couple of weeks.

The growth of the Chinese beef market is illustrated in Figure 1.

The top four beef-supplying countries to China over the past decade have been Brazil, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand.

Their combined sales were 1,127t in 2006 but a decade later in 2016 had surged to 515,000t, making it the fastest-growing market in the world by a considerable distance.

Forecast

Using the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) import data which is based on carcase weight equivalent (CWE), China is forecast to import 1.575m tonnes in 2017, the USA will import 1.080m tonnes, Vietnam 900,000t and Japan 745,000t.

Of these markets, Vietnam is the lowest value with most of its product supplied by India while Japan is a high value market and the main outlet for USA steak meat exports.

The USA import market is mainly for manufacturing beef used in burgers and therefore lower value.

China is manly a buyer of forequarter cuts of beef such as shin, chuck and blade and according to trade publication, WBR, Brazil is getting the equivalent of $4.60/kg to $4.70/kg (€3.83/kg to €3.92/kg) for shin and shank while Uruguay is getting $4.00/kg to $4.10/kg (€3.33/kg to €€3.42/kg).

Volumes are continuing to grow with Uruguay 136,000t of beef and offal to China this year according to the National Meat Institute, a 17% increase.

Pigmeat

China is also the world’s biggest pig meat importer, expected to take 2,840m tonnes CWE in 2017 according to FAO which is twice the size of the next largest, Japan who will take 1,412m tonnes CWE.

China’s imports have doubled since 2015 when they took 1,448m tonnes, and the biggest supplier to China is the EU, who exported 1.6m tonnes in the year to May 2017, which is more than double the 700,000t amount exported from the EU to China in 2014.

This is partly due to growing demand in China but also the loss of the Russian market to the EU.

Ireland is one of the EU suppliers of pigmeat to China and has grown the business from 1,000t in 2007 to 65,000t last year (Bord Bia).

Mexico is the third-largest importer of pigmeat in the world, taking 896,000t in the year to May 2017, and is also a customer of Irish pigmeat.

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