At the 2023 Cattle Industry Convention, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster, Ron Hays caught up with the president and CEO of the United States Meat Export Federation, Dan Halstrom and talked about the U.S. beef export market in 2022, and what he sees for the year 2023.
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The final statistics for meat exports in 2022 will be in next week, and while USMEF expects record volume and three to four percent growth, Halstrom said the value is going to be the real story.
“It is not any one market; it is broad-based growth across a lot of markets,” Halstrom said. “I think that strategy is key. We are going to have three two-billion-dollar markets in China, Korea, and Japan, and a couple more that are over a billion- Mexico and Central America and South America.”
The month of November was a bit of a rough patch, Halstrom said, especially in Asia, partially due to the strong U.S. dollar at that time.
“The good news is, the Japanese yen and South Korean won have moderated a bit and has improved, not back to the original level, but gained about half the devaluation back,” Halstrom said. “We are expecting to see those markets improve in December.”
Despite headwinds, Halstrom said beef demand is the best he has ever seen.
“Korea especially is just an unbelievably strong market,” Halstrom said. “That will be our number one value market, probably pushing 2.7 billion in sales.”
Halstrom said he believes that Korea is the world leader in retail and online eCommerce.
“Japan has still been struggling a bit with Covid,” Halstrom said. “They have relaxed their code restrictions in May as Korea did, but they are not out and about yet.”
Because of the close contact of Japanese society, Halstrom said the people are being cautious about spreading Covid. In Japan, Halstrom said mass transit, such as trains, are one of the main forms of transportation, making the Japanese more susceptible to the spread of sickness.
Even with setbacks, Halstrom said Japan is still going to be a 2.4-billion-dollar market.
As for the third two-billion-dollar market in China, Halstrom said he expects to see a big rebound when food service returns at full force.
With beef supplies forecasted to be lower in the coming months, Halstrom said it will be critical to maximize the use of the beef carcass.
“We are working with our customer base in places like Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, and Central America on maximizing some of these other cuts,” Halstrom said. “That will be sort of the theme for this year to take and maybe replace a little of the lost volume that they have been used to.”
Halstrom said he is confident about the state of the U.S. beef industry going into 2023.
“The reason I feel good about where we are at is because we are the marque reputation in the world,” Halstrom said.
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