Ireland to challenge France in Algerian live cattle market
Algeria is an open market for Irish live cattle exports but, despite that, no shipments have been sent there yet. The North African country imports almost 100,000 cattle every year and Irish livestock exports can debut starting next years, declared Joe Burke, Bord Bia’s senior manager of meat at livestock, quoted by Agriland.
He believes that Irish livestock exports should concentrate on finished bulls and suckler-bred weanlings to compete with French cattle. "Even if we were to gain a reasonable market share out of that, we would be competing mainly with imports from France – which again they are dominant exporters but, the Algerian demand is strong for finished bulls. Algeria is one that we could certainly see finished bulls going to in 2019", explained Burke.
In the last couple of years, livestock exports have been sent to EU states such as Italy; Poland; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Portugal; Romania; Slovakia; and the Czech Republic but Bord Bia is now focusing in finding other markets.
North Africa region is looking quite promising for Irish livestock exports as Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco are big importers of cattle. "In the likes of Morocco, previously we often exported up to 20,000 cattle in a year to Morocco – that is truckloads of cattle as opposed to boats – but hopefully that should then represent a viable market for us for suckler bred weanlings", added Burke.
In the first ten months of this year, Ireland exported 49,105 cattle heads or 30% higher than in the corresponding period in 2017.
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