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Darren Carty reported in this week's Irish Farmers Journal that Australian beef and sheepmeat exports set a new record in 2024.
In the process, they consolidated their position as the number one sheepmeat exporting country in the world and the number two beef exporter, ahead of the United States, but still only exporting half the volume that Brazil exported in 2024.
Despite a small drop in US beef export volumes, 2024 was a year when the amount of beef traded on global markets reached an all-time high and the fact that this coincided with exceptionally strong beef prices in the northern hemisphere suggests that the demand for beef was particularly robust, despite the high prices.
Brazil
ABIEC, which represents Brazil’s exporters, shows that beef exports accelerated again in 2024, reaching 2.645m tonnes up to November, a 345,000t increase on the 2.264m tonnes exported in 2023.
When December’s volume is added, the total will still be under 3m tonnes, which is staggering given that the 2m tonnes export line was crossed for the first time in 2020 and it is just 20 years since 1m tonnes was exported for the first time in 2004.
China is the main destination for Brazil’s beef exports. In the year to November, 1.2m tonnes were exported to that market, plus almost 110,000t to Hong Kong. Their second-most-important destination in 2024 was the US with almost 207,000t.
Indeed, there are reports that Brazil has already filled the entire 66,000t open quota in the US for 2025, two weeks into the new year.
The EU remains a significant market for Brazil’s beef exports, taking 102,245t up to November.
What is interesting to note is that while the volume may be relatively small, the value is high at $690,204, which is $6,750 (€6,553) per tonne, which makes the EU the highest-value large-volume export market.
The value of Brazil’s beef exports to China in the first 11 months of 2024 was $5.418m (€5.260m), which works out at $4,482 (€4,350) per tonne.
USA
Data published by the US Meat Exporters Federation also to the end of November shows that despite increasing by 10% compared with November the previous year to 109,288t, beef export volumes for the year to November were slightly down on the same period in 2023 at 1.18m tonnes.
Their biggest market is Mexico, taking 211,920t, just ahead of South Korea which took 210,282t for the first 11 months of the year.
China and Hong Kong are also a major market for US beef exports, taking 196,437t up to the end of November 2024.
The EU and UK combined took 15,762t of US beef exports in 2024, which was down 18% on the same period in 2023.
Normally when beef supply increases in any of the large beef-exporting countries, value falls.
However, in 2024, all major exporters report rising value for beef exports per tonne over the course of the year.
This is also reflected in farmgate prices, which have traded around the equivalent of €6/kg in the US and the UK, and comfortably above €5/kg in the second half of the year in Europe.
Consumer demand has been robust and beef producers will need this to continue in 2025 to sustain current price levels and any further increases because of tighter supply in Europe in the first half of this year.
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