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Dawn Meats has confirmed that it is making “steady progress” in developing the US market.
Sspeaking to the Irish Farmers Journal at the Agri-Food debate in UCD on Thursday night, Dawn CEO Niall Browne said that “relationships” are key in getting more Irish beef into the potentially lucrative US market.
“In relation to the US we are making steady progress. We are dealing with more and more customers and we are building up relationships. As the relationship builds the volume will build,” Browne said.
Dawn Meats became the third Irish exporter to win a US exporting licence since the opening up of the US market to Irish beef last year and, while sales volumes may not be as high as Minister Simon Coveney forecast, progress is being made.
In the region of just 2,200t was sent from Ireland to the US in 2015.
China has also been a major target for Dawn and other meat processing firms in Ireland since the ban on Irish imported beef into the country has been lifted. In February 2015, it was announced that China had lifted its BSE restrictions against Ireland. On the surface, there would appear to have been little progress on getting beef into the market.
“In China, the full approval is not there yet, so we are waiting on more visits from the Chinese authorities which we hope will happen later this year. We’d be hopeful that once full approvals have been got, the business will start in earnest,” Browne said.
Lighter carcases
Dawn is also seeing lighter carcases on the back of the specifications given by the company outlining its desire for lower deadweight.
“For the last four years we have published our specifications of what we want and we want carcases of less than 420kg. It is trending down all the time because our suppliers know the specification that we want,” Browne said.
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