“I don’t think that we will see much increase in production volume, the real effort now is to look for opportunities to grow value” Sirma Karapeeva Chief Executive of New Zealand’s Meat Industry Association (MIA) told the Irish Farmers Journal this week in a wide-ranging interview.

MIA represent 99.9% of the red meat processors, marketeers and exporters in New Zealand (NZ) and the issues they deal with will be familiar to Irish agri-food processors as well.

With a similar level of production exported as Ireland, market access is a key focus for MIA, though China is by far the largest export market.

Sirma Karapeeva explained that “we actually export to over 110 markets around the world and ultimately each individual company has their own strategy in place in terms of where they place the product to extract the maximum value.”

While defending members selling into the highest value market, she also pointed out that the “open doors around the world means that companies can ship their products very quickly between markets.”

The example of product destined for China being rerouted to other markets when China closed overnight during COVID-19 was used to illustrate the flexibility of NZ exporters to adapt.

NZ like Ireland is also wrestling with reconciling beef and lamb output with emissions reductions, and like Ireland don’t have clear answers on how to do both.

The country is in election mode at the moment with the current Labour – Green party Government facing the electorate on 14 October and Labour are struggling in opinion polling.

The other huge issue for NZ meat processors is labour, something that Irish factories are also familiar with. Karapeeva explained that “typically in the past the shortfall has been filled by migrant workers coming from all around the world” but the pandemic made that impossible.

Government policy has also tightened on migration and she said that “we’ve had to fight very, very hard to source the migrant workers to fill the shortfall.” MIA are working to attract more New Zealanders to train and work in the industry and use technology where possible to upskill the work of factory employees.