One of the largest meat processors in New Zealand (NZ) is prioritising beef over lamb when it comes to growing sales in the UK market.

“We want to build our share slowly. We are not into flooding the market,” said Helen Scott from Alliance, a farmer-owned red meat co-operative.

Under a new post-Brexit trade deal, NZ exporters get access to the UK market via tariff-free quotas. These quotas increase in volume each year, with unlimited, tariff-free access to the UK market for beef after 10 years and for lamb, after 15 years.

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In an interview with the Irish Farmers Journal, Scott said Alliance has an initial three-year plan in place for growing its beef exports to the UK: “We will be working very closely with customer partnerships, particularly where we have lamb business now, to grow our beef category. Our first opportunity is the out of home market and meal box market.”

After that, Alliance wants to replicate success that it has already had with selling high-end lamb cuts online in the UK, through the likes of digital grocery outlet Ocado.

Helen Scott is based in London and works as regional general director for Alliance.

“We will then piggyback that and look to get hand-picked into retail (supermarkets),” Scott said.

However, it isn’t bottom tier, cheap beef that Alliance is looking to sell in the UK. Scott makes clear their key goal is to grow market share by introducing value-added beef products.

“We have had a lot of success launching premium lamb into the UK market. We are looking to do the same and almost create new demand for international products,” she said.

Lamb exports

NZ processors are less focussed on growing lamb exports to the UK under the new trade deal, because a tariff-free quota of 102,620t was already available and only around half of this has been used in recent years.

However, Scott points out that the UK-NZ trade deal brings other benefits for exporters, aside from removing tariffs: “We are still on old fashioned paperwork documentation that will be moving to digital. It will allow us to get our sheepmeat and beef to our customers a lot quicker when it arrives at the ports.”