Irish beef has finally made it into retail shops in the Philippines. Organic Irish beef, supplied by ABP company Good Herdsmen is now being sold by Healthy Options, the Philippines’ largest organic health foods retailer.

High-value cuts such as striploin, ribeye and T-bone are being marketed as hormone-free, raised on family farms, with farm-to-table traceability in 33 stores across the Philippines, including 24 stores in the capital Manila, home to more than 21 million people.

Relationships

Malcolm Leoi, Bord Bia’s market specialist for southeast Asia, said: “Since the market opened for Irish beef in 2014, Bord Bia has been steadily building relationships between Irish beef suppliers and key trade customers in the Philippines. We are now leveraging these trade relationships to launch Irish beef for the first time in the Philippine retail channel.

The Philippines is currently Ireland’s third-largest Asian export destination for food and drink by value, after mainland China and Japan.

In 2018, Bord Bia won an EU contract to promote pork and beef on behalf of EU in the Philippines, Vietnam and South Korea. As a result, Irish beef is currently featuring as part of a three-year EU campaign in which €3.9m is being spent on the promotion of beef and pork in these countries.

Potential

Malcolm Leoi added: “The Philippines offers significant growth potential for Irish beef, and heading up this EU campaign is recognition of Ireland as an exporting country with a strong history of promoting and supplying quality beef that is sustainably produced.

“The campaign is important because it gives Irish exporters access to food buyers in these priority markets who know about the high production standards in the EU but may not have discovered the additional assurances Ireland can give around sustainability with our Origin Green programme.”

John Purcell of Good Herdsmen (ABP’s organic division) said: “The launch of Irish beef in this market is a welcome development for a premium market opportunity and will no doubt open up further avenues for organic and Irish beef in the long term.

Vital

“This is vital at a time when diversification into international markets is becoming increasingly important with the departure of the UK – our biggest market for beef and pork – from the EU.”

South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines have a combined beef import demand of 1.57m tonnes, which represents an increase of 44% in the last decade. Bord Bia expects a strong import demand between now and 2023.

Overall, Irish food and drink exports to the Philippines in 2019 totalled €76.9m, an increase of 29% from 2018, driven largely by meat and dairy products.

Total Irish exports of beef to the Philippines amounted to €14.3m in 2018 and increased substantially to reach €37.8m in 2019. This was largely made up of frozen bone-in and frozen boneless cuts.