Beef exports up

The steady upward trend in Belgian beef exports, which has been going on for years, is thus entering a new round. This is shown in the figures compiled by the Belgian Meat Office on the basis of Eurostat data.

With a volume of 34,657 t, the Netherlands continues to occupy the first place on the customer list. In addition, Belgian beef is high on the list of French and German neighbours with 20,048 t and 15,704 t, respectively. The most important third country destinations are Côte d' Ivoire with 3,761 t and Ghana with 3,120 t.

In the first half of this year, 385,972 t of pork were also transported across the Belgian borders. This represents a year-on-year decrease of 8.1%. Declining export figures are accompanied by declining production figures: In the first half of this year, 510,560 t of pork were produced commercially, which corresponds to a decline of 5.6% compared with the same period of the previous year.

The volume of intra-community trade shrank by 7.4% to 340,194 t. Slaughter halves are the most important category with 207,582 t, followed by cuts with 89,463 t, offal with 28,512 t and pig fat with 14,638 t. Germany remains the most important trading partner for Belgian pork, with 128,483 t. The other places are followed by Poland with 81,301 t and the Netherlands with 45,867 t.

Third-country business also lost momentum: around 45,778 t of pork were placed there in the first half of 2017, down 13.2% on the same period last year. Outside Europe, there is particularly high demand for offal (26,274 t) and cuts (15,491 t) from the kingdom.