Listen: Anuga, the food industry's Ploughing

Anuga, the world’s largest food and drink show was held in Cologne Germany this week. It could be described as the Ploughing Championships for the food and drinks industry.

On average, it attracts 160,000 trade visitors from 180 countries, and all the major food exporters competing with each other for the attention of the visiting buyers.

Of the 34 Irish companies exhibiting, 27 were under the Origin Green-branded Bord Bia Irish stands. By far the most dominant Irish presence was in the meat hall, but there were Irish stands in the dairy, chilled food, frozen food and bakery areas as well.

Listen to Bord Bia's chief executive Tara McCarthy in our podcast below:

In the meat hall, the Dawn companies Kepak, Liffey, Kildare Chilling, Slaney, Irish Country Meats, Rosderra, Ribworld, QK, and Traditional Meat Company were all present.

ABP didn’t associate with any country or region, preferring corporate branding to reflect the breadth of their locations across the British Isles and Poland – though they were located beside the Irish stand.

Dawn’s new UK joint venture with Dunbia (under Dunbia branding) featured on a prominent Northern Ireland stand where Hewitt’s, the Foyle Food Group and Linden (now jointly owned by Fane Valley and ABP) were present.

Quality Meat Scotland, the industry levy organisation in Scotland, had a stand covering its PGI-recognised beef and lamb as well as its pork sector.

Kerry Foods and Ornua were under the Origin Green theme in the dairy hall, with Advanced Food Concepts and Dansko on separate stands.

German market

For Irish farmers, the German market presents opportunity in beef and is a well established dairy market – particularly for butter.

Kerrygold has become a huge success, securing a premium place in the market commanding a 70c to €1 premium over other packs of butter.

The Kerrygold brand has successfully been extended to other spreads, cheese and yogurts. Kerry Foods are also having considerable success in the German market with their cheese strings snack product.

Butter prices

This is a golden age for butter prices, which have contributed to the recovery in milk price over the past year.

Irish farmers will welcome the views of Matthias Brune, Ornua’s head of marketing in Germany, who believes that while butter prices may have peaked at around €7/kg, they are unlikely to return to the €3/kg base in the near future.

Listen to Matthias Brune in our podcast below:

Current reduced global supplies of dairy, alongside the repositioning of butter as a product with a positive rather than negative health perspective have contributed to this.

The market is now returning to the full fat versions of dairy products rather than the reduced fat versions which had been promoted for many years.

Beef and Lamb

While smaller, niche food brands and companies are important to local economies across Ireland, it is the main sectors of dairy, beef and sheep that are the basis of most farm businesses. Pigs and poultry are now large farm businesses where a few hundred farmers sustain thousands of processing jobs.

For Irish beef, Germany remains a country with considerable potential but doesn’t have a success story equivalent to Kerrygold.

It is, however, a target market for Bord Bia who see it as having the right credentials to be a market that can deliver more for Irish farmers.

Competition

Spending time in the meat hall plus visits to supermarkets also revealed the extent of competition for Irish beef and lamb.

A resurgent Argentina, back on the export market following a decade in the wilderness due to a change of government in late-2015 had a huge presence.

Their neighbours Brazil, despite their problems earlier this year also had a huge stand and appeared to be doing plenty of business.

Uruguay, who have the best traceability system in South America, also had a huge stand and, along with Argentina, enjoy a reputation in Germany for quality beef.

Listen to Minister of State for Food Andrew Doyle discuss international competition in our podcast below:

German supermarkets

The competition theme continued on visits to meat counters in supermarkets. While Kerrygold was prominent on dairy counters, Irish beef had to fight for space on beef counters.

It was notable that as well as German beef having the main presence, the top shelf was contested by Argentinian, American and Australian Wagyu which in some cases was higher priced.

Real is the leading German hypermarket, with over 300 stores across the country.

As well as the Kerrygold range it sources beef from five Irish companies: ABP, Dawn, Kepak, Kildare and Liffey. They give the most prominent place to Irish beef and lamb of the supermarkets visited.

Rewe is the second largest supermarket group, with smaller stores than Real but over 3,000 outlets. They carry the Dawn Black Angus range and Kepak’s Watergrasshill lamb.

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Anuga food fair brings out the best in Irish industry