New test for chilled meat to China
Chilled beef and lamb being shipped to China by Silver Fern Farms should fetch a 10-20 per cent premium over frozen meat, SFF sales general manager Grant Howie says.
The Dunedin-based meat processor has just sent its first 20ft container filled with about 13 tonnes of meat in what is a trial to test access for chilled product into the China market.
Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s largest meat exporter to China, having achieved $316 million of sales to the region in 2016, for a total trade worth $1.14 billion. All of the product entered the market in frozen form.
As well as the shipped meat, SFF has also air-freighted multiple orders of chilled beef and lamb to customers. Howie said SFF was using Shanghai Maling’s sales networks to distribute the meat. At the beginning of the year the Chinese company invested $267m in cash in return for a 50 per cent stake in SFF’s business. ‘‘Since they are part of the Bright Food group, we are using that network when it suits us. Their expertise is greater around Shanghai and the east coast.’’
The procedures involved in selling chilled meat to China were complex, especially satisfying food safety regulations. The pilot is part of a six-month trial negotiated by the Government, and while small volumes of air-freight meat have been exported, this is the first seafreight container shipment.
Alliance Group and Greenlea flew the first export orders to China in June, where it ended up in high-end retail stores and upmarket restaurants.
Howie said it was more of a risk to send a container than one-tonne orders by air, but SFF had to test China’s protocols and the supply chain for chilled meat at ports. The container shipment would test the process at scale. The first seafreight container leaves New Zealand this week and is due to arrive into China in early September.
’’The cuts they are taking are important. They are primarily secondary cuts of prime beef – cuts that would otherwise have been sold frozen at lower prices. They have the capability to position these traditional Chinese cuts at a premium in supermarkets.’’
SFF is also testing protocols for small-scale air-freight orders of beef into key food service distributors who service high-end restaurants and hotels in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and an airfreight order for lamb cuts into a major multinational high-end supermarket chain.