European meat union forecasts drop in exports
Speaking at this year’s Scottish Association for Meat Wholesalers conference, Jean Luc Meriaux, secretary general at the UECBV, which represents European livestock organisations, presented the union’s forecast for meat production, exports and consumption up until 2023.
According to UECBV, beef will see the most significant drop in exports and consumption of around 5% by 2023. This echoes a 11% decrease in beef and live cattle exports since last year.
Meriaux attributed this to a lack of supply and geopolitical constraints in profitable regions such as Russia and Turkey, where beef exports decreased by 65.3% in January 2014 compared to the previous year: "Turkey was a very providing market for the EU before 2012, but unfortunately the market collapsed for different reasons and we exported very little in 2013. There is still a market in Turkey, where there is a deficit of beef production and we expect Turkey will be back on the international market soon."
Meriaux stated that the decrease in beef production will not result in a surge of imports, "mainly because of limited supply and also because there will be huge competition for the purchase of meat on the international market, driven by China".
"However this forecast is based on the assumption that there will be no Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with North America, if there was to be an FTA we would have to rethink our forecast," he added.
UECBV also recorded a steady decline in sheep supply in the EU market over the past 10 years from 985,000 tonnes in 2004 to 702,000t in 2014. UECBV forecast that this would continue until 2023, due to decreasing sheep herds in major lamb-producing countries such as the UK, Ireland and Greece, with the exception of Romania and Italy.
Meriaux also highlighted a lack of supply of lamb meat being imported to the EU from New Zealand and Australia due increased interest in the Chinese market and bad weather conditions affecting supply.
