Chinese beef buyers come knocking

Big online premium beef retailers Sino-Australia Top Beef (SATB) sent representatives to Central Australia last week to visit cattle operations, an abattoir and beef research facilities.

Their agenda was to investigate Australia’s ability to supply both the volumes and the type of product they need to meet what they expect to be enormous growth in demand for beef in China in coming years.

Forecasts are for Chinese demand to hit eight million tonnes by 2020, up from the 750,000t consumed last year.

According to SATB’s Vivien Zhang, a significant percentage of that demand will be for high eating quality, healthy or organic grass and grainfed beef.

SATB last year sourced 4000t of boxed beef from Australia and wants to ‘at least’ double that this year, Ms Zhang said.

Ultimately, the company would like between 90 and 100 per cent of their online beef sales to be sourced from Australia because that would tick all the boxes on the Chinese consumers’ want list - ‘clean, green, healthy, good tasting and from a very young place, only 200 years old’, she said.

But it’s not just manufactured beef the entrepreneurs have their eye on.

This trip was very much about looking into the live trade game.

“We wanted to discover what the costs and benefits would be for us to be involved in importing live cattle from Australia,” Ms Zhang said.

SATB would look to import finished cattle ready for slaughter, she said.

Chief Minister of the Northern Territory Adam Giles, who was instrumental in organising the visit during a trip he made to China last month, said cattle prices in China were on the increase, due in part to the cost of feed, and that made Australia’s live animal supply an attractive and cost-effective way to meet growing markets.

He said the aim, from the perspective of Northern Australia’s beef industry, was to demonstrate it could offer reliable and sustainable cattle production and had the livestock transport, infrastructure and land quality to underpin that.

Ms Zhang said the delegation was impressed.

“We are confident Australia can meet our needs and keen to forge business relationships,” she said.

There were some aspects that weren’t quite as imagined, she said.

“We had heard so much about drought and thought we’d be looking at very brown and dusty places but it was different - much greener and much heavier cattle,” she said.

Chief executive officer of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association Tracey Hayes said the e-commerce opportunities presenting in China represented huge potential for Australia’s beef industry.

“The ability to reach to tens of millions of customers at the click of a button is something Australia should be very interested in,” she said.

“The online market is an enormous growth market and potentially a high-returning one. Chinese consumers are showing a clear preference for buying food online and having it delivered to their door.

“SATB has already established joint ventures in NSW and Victoria and are now looking to extend their supply.

“Central Australia is organic by default and produces the type of animals this market is interested in.

“Our product is clean, green and traceable - all the attributes online consumers in China are seeking.

“These are unprecedented times for Australian beef - the low Australian dollar and Free Trade Agreements making us more competitive and increasing global beef consumption is all adding up to big opportunities.”