China is increasing becoming a significant market for our sheep meats taking now 11% of our production and growing.
We have traded for years with them with our wool, tallow hides and skins and it seems they are now wanting our meat and offals. Sheep meats are considered at the top end of Chinese cuisine and if properly targeted could help maintain these products at the high price end of the market.
What percentage of our product goes into these markets will be important as the Chinese meat markets are known for their volatility.
The FTA agreement between NZ and China will see all meat tariffs phased out by 2016, which gives this country an export advantage over neighbour and competitor Australia.
The greatest opportunities for New Zealand in surging demand for meat among China's aspiring middle classes lie in the sheepmeat sector, says a Wendy Voss of Rabobank, in a report, Feeding the Dragon.."But for NZ, the Chinese market will continue to play a prominent role in sheepmeat exports," she said. Ms Voss warned that exporters would not only face competition from a range of supplying countries, but also the possibility of changes in Chinese government policy which could make or break markets almost overnight.
"NZ also faces volatility in the market, particularly through changes in market access conditions either directly or through competitors changing their access agreements," she said. Other threats to meat export growth were volume constraints on NZ lamb production, producer costs and the threat of improved access from strong competitors such as Brazil and the USA reports Voxy.
Beef and sheepmeat combined make up only 14 percent of Chinese meat consumption, compared to 20 percent for poultry and 65 percent for pork. Increased wealth, urbanisation, westernisation and population growth boosted total consumption of beef and sheepmeat in China by 2.5 million tonnes and 2 million tonnes, respectively, between 1996 and 2008, but the domestic farm sector also grew rapidly. China has been an important market for NZ lamb for more than a decade and is the largest buyer of NZ wool, tallow, skins, hides and leathers and has been a small, but growing, market for sheepmeat, beef and offal. "The biggest challenge for producers in continuing this rate of growth will come from supply availability of animals," Ms Voss said.
China/Hong Kong buyers took 42,000 tonnes (11 percent) of NZ sheepmeat exports in 2009, compared to 189,200 tonnes imported by the EU under quota. Ms Voss said China had 22 percent of the world's population but only 7 percent of its arable land, and the Chinese government estimated 10 percent of that land to be polluted, mainly with heavy metals and chemicals.
1 Comments
China does seem to hold good potential as a sheepmeat market as I imagine since they have they numerically have the worlds biggest sheep flock they clearly are traditional sheepmeat eaters.
The key to doing business with the Chinese seems to be to have patience and various meat companies have been building relationships over a decade or more that are probably starting to pay dividends. I think however it would be a mistake to abandon our traditional relationships with European and UK customers for these are the highest paying markets in the world but the likes of China,Japan and the US are helping keep them honest.
Perhaps China is the sort of market that our meat companies could develop their composite brands, sourceing complimentary supply from South America. Then were could clip the ticket like our learned dairy counterparts.
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