After four days of meeting their customers at the SIAL food fair in Paris, Scottish meat exporters yesterday used one word to describe the current market in Europe – “challenging”.
Laurent Vernet, the head of marketing at Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), confirmed that red meat exports had flatlined in the past 12 months in the face of the overall economic situation and had suffered a 10 per cent adverse swing in currency terms.
“There has been no increase in the volume of meat sold although the mix has changed,” he said. “Beef sales are slightly up; lamb sales are slightly down and the market for offals has risen.”
For Simon Dowling of Scotbeef, in addition to the overall economic situation and the value of the euro, the other factor was the price of cattle.
“The problem in Scotland is the price of livestock,” he said. “We need to try and bring the cattle price more in line with that in Ireland. There is such a gap between the two countries.”
There was still a lot of loyalty and support for Scottish meat in Europe, he added, but this was really being tested with the price having to be charged.
This was his first week working for the new Scotbeef Inverurie firm and he described it as a good move as it gave him more product to sell.
He indicated that the new company, which combines Scotbeef Bridge of Allan, Mathers of Inverurie, and Scotch Premier also of Inverurie, would be moving back to the top of the quality range after Scotch Premier delved down into the volume market.
Peter Robertson, of Millers of Speyside, is a regular visitor to the food fair and his view of this week’s work was that “you have to have a sharp pencil for every deal you do”.
His company had been able to maintain its customer base in France, Holland and Belgium. In the latter it is trying to increase pork sales.
Away from the QMS stand – which hosted the sales efforts of a dozen export companies – Rizvan Khalid, of Euro Quality Lambs, the largest exporter of lambs from the UK into Europe, said there were more challenges than a year ago.
he said: “We have not been taking on more customers as there are a lot of people going around looking to deal but asking for extended credit,” he said.