Trying to find the perfect partner for meat trading that meets both customers’ and suppliers’ needs can be a bit complicated. It’s important to keep in mind some aspects that can affect your final decision, such as the price-quality ratio, shipping costs and delivery times if the meat trading company has all the necessary know-how.
It’s important to find a partner with a consolidated and wide network of meat producers to allow them to respond to your demand. In this article, you can find a guide that can help you in decision-making.
Top meat exporting countries
The international meat market is a widespread market made of meat producers, exporters and importers.
The largest meat exporter country is Brazil, with more than 7,5 billion dollars generated, followed by Australia and USA to complete the top 3. The top ten of the meat exporting countries include India, Argentina, New Zealand, Canada, Uruguay Paraguay. EU’s most important meat exporters are Germany, Spain, and The Netherlands. Spain is one of the main pork exporters in Europe.
Top meat exporting countries can supply 90% of the global meat demand, and Brazil alone can supply up to 20%.
South America and especially Brazil are famous for beef export (almost 25% of global export), Australia for lamb and mutton, whereas Spain and Canada are specialized in pork export and the USA are famous for poultry (especially chicken).
Meat trading companies by country
Meat trading companies try to respond to the needs of the customer, looking through the network of their suppliers in order to always find the best options.
The most demanded product categories are pork, chicken and beef, in their different cuts, offcuts and offals: from fillet to livers, bones or trimmings. Trimmings are those pieces of meat and fat excessed from larger pieces of meat, usually requested by meat industries.
Meat commodities trading refers both to the industry, supplying semi-finished products, and to local distributors who then supply retailers.
The meat business market is very dynamic: consumers’ tastes, trends and seasonality can affect the offer of meat products, both as to the type of meat offered as quality.
For example, consumption of some specific beef cuts like feather blade, tails, chuck is higher in Winter, due to culinary traditions that prefer slow cooking recipes when it’s cold. During Summer, the most exported meat products are mostly related to grill or barbecue, like beef ribeyes .
Meat selling companies also have the task of obtaining licenses and permits to trade meat, as well as having to comply with the legislation of individual countries.
For a meat trading company, it is fundamental to have a reliable, wide and fast suppliers’ network to be able to find any kind of product even in case the importation from some countries is stuck or interrupted due to sanitary problems or temporary bans. For example, in the past 2/3 years, there has been a considerable increase in the export of pork meat to China because of African swine fever (also referred to as ASF), which has caused several drops in China’s internal production. This situation has caused a shortage of the product in Europe and a consequent increase in prices because main European pork producers such as Spain, exported a large part of meat products to China.
Over the past years, the meat business has become more and more eco-friendly:
Many of the producers we work with are consistently reducing the CO2 emissions and water/energy used in the production process, by implementing innovative technologies. We, at Athena, have chosen to locateour office in a building with solar panels.
Organic meat has also become more and more popular and be sure it’s among the wide range of products that we can offer.
Athena, over the years, has built a wide network of suppliers that allow responding to any customer’s need, both large distributors and industries, being able to provide them with a consolidated and complete service.
Meat trading companies in the US
What makes the American meat trading market so competitive? We need to consider mainly 2 aspects: the dimension of the country and the social-cultural tradition.
Large countries as USA, Brazil, etc., thanks to their dimensions, have developed a wide network of meat producers and farms. Furthermore, thanks to their infrastructures and geographic position, they can ship their products fast.
But to understand why these countries are the largest meat exporters we have to consider social-cultural aspects as well: USA has a long tradition of farmers and immigrants, who in 1800 found USAs meat incredible: this has been an opportunity for farmers to raise animals and start the meat business.
The development of the meat business market led to innovations in transport and refrigerating systems, which allowed farmers to offer better meat at a lower price.
Meat trading companies in South America
Brazil’s meat business market is related to its history as well: both European colonizers and then European beef demand affected their meat business. Brazil isn’t the only leading export country in South America: in the top ten of the meat exporting countries there are also Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay.
In recent years Argentina’s business has been impacted by laws and export limits, that have contributed to a lower production.
What makes a meat commodities trading company like Athena the right partner for your business?
Athena is made of a fast, skilled and professional team. We are always willing to find the best solution in terms of packaging, quality, delivery and payment terms before closing the deal. Then, our suppliers just need to sell and our customers just need to buy – we will take care of everything standing in between.
We work with the best transport companies to provide a service you will be satisfied with. We mainly supply frozen meat from EU countries, which is where we are located. Our company’s strong position in this territory has further grown over the past years, since we have built long-term business relations with the best brands, knowing their individual qualities, timings, and their capacity to choose the best price-quality ratio for our customers.
Thanks to our experience in the international meat market, we can supply frozen meat from many other countries outside the EU as well, such as Brazil and Argentina.
Want to know more about Athena? Please, contact us by roberta@athena-meat.com