American Love of Burgers Fuels New Zealand’s Red Meat Sector
An insatiable hunger for beef burgers and a renewed love for lamb are helping keep New Zealand’s red meat sector buoyant, while demand from China remains weak.
New Zealand’s red meat exports to the United States and Canada have risen this year.
See also: NZ report on China market examines when demand may improve
Meat Industry Association data showed North America was the country’s largest export market for red meat – having first surpassed China for the top spot in April.
Its latest figures for May found exports to the US were up 28 percent on last year, earning $358 million for the economy in the month alone.
Red meat co-operative Alliance Group’s global sales director James McWilliam had just returned from a week-long market trip to North America.
He said beef sales were doing really well there.
“We’ve obviously enjoyed a fairly strong season when it comes to beef into North America, which has certainly assisted in offsetting some really depressed demand we’ve seen in other parts of the world.”
McWilliam said the co-op was able to plug the gap in demand left by the declining US cow herd – which is at its lowest level since the late 1970s.
“We’ve been able to capitalise on that by sending a significant amount of some of our manufacturing lines, in particular, to take advantage of the good old hamburger.
“There’s no one in the world that consumes burgers like the North Americans do. And so we’ve seen very, very strong returns, comparatively speaking, for our grinding meat into North America.”
He said forecasts remained fairly strong on the beef front for the coming month.
“The global outlook remains really volatile, and it’s been an extremely tough season for both growers, producers and obviously processors and marketers,” he said.
“The anchor that is China has certainly dragged us down in the last year or so.”
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