Global Initiative will help grow Northern Ireland Meat Export

A major marketing initiative by Invest Northern Ireland with the Livestock and Meat Commission will help local meat companies keep abreast of global opportunities to grow exports.

The latest project for beef, poultry, pork and sheep meat processors, was announced recently by Jeremy Fitch, Invest NI's Executive Director of Business & Sector Development, at a special briefing for meat industry leaders in Belfast. It will offer companies in Northern Ireland's biggest food sector easy access to 'live' data, analysis, forecasts and trends in global meat markets.

Mr Fitch, speaking at the event, said: "Our engagement with the GIRA is a further development of the practical support and guidance that we have been providing to local meat companies over many years especially in areas such as productivity, new product and process development and international marketing.

"Our strategic focus for the industry is on assisting companies to enhance their competitiveness, win more business and help to drive economic growth via greater sales in international markets. We believe that there are substantial opportunities for our meat and poultry in Europe and increasingly in emerging markets such as Russia and China. Significant business opportunities exist in these markets as well as in established areas such as Great Britain, Spain France and Germany.

"Meat is a vitally important sector within food and drink, the largest manufacturing sector with 23 per cent of output producing more than £4 billion sales, mostly outside Northern Ireland. Food and drink is also the largest single sector employer in manufacturing with 20,000 employees in processing operations and a further 70,000 on farms and other industries such as packaging and transport. The beef, sheepmeat, pigmeat and poultry sectors together contribute almost £2 billion to the economy and employ around 10,000 people.

"Sustainable growth within the industry will come from greater export sales flowing from enhanced competitiveness through higher levels of innovation and creativity in products, processing and marketing.

"We believe that the industry has immense potential and is well-placed to benefit from the increasing demand from consumers for quality and innovative products that combine taste and texture with assured traceability and provenance.

"Our link up with GIRA will enable beef, pig meat, poultry and sheep meat processors here to sharpen their competitive edge by the access that it provides to accurate and up-to-date research and analysis of the world's meat markets.

"Access to this research will allow Northern Ireland meat companies to obtain knowledge about market trends and forecasts for slaughter, production, consumption, trading conditions, prices, to see where the meat industry is going in both short and long terms, and to develop strategies for those regions and markets where they sell today and where they must be selling tomorrow to ensure growth."