What inflation, free-trade agreements mean for beef demand in the UK, Europe

UK Wagyu boss Tom Richardson says the economic woes of the world are not hurting demand for top-shelf beef in Europe. London, he says, is “a market of its own”.

Demand for Wagyu remains strong in the UK, despite cost-of-living pressures.

The economic woes of the world haven’t taken much of an edge off demand for quality beef in the UK and Europe, according to Britain’s largest Wagyu supplier.

Tom Richardson, the managing director of Warrendale Wagyu, based in Yorkshire, said rising cost of living prices hadn’t taken the edge off demand for premium beef with London in particular “a market of its own”.

“(The cost-of-living crunch hadn’t affected demand) as much as I had anticipated,” Mr Richardson told The Australian Ag Podcast, out today.

“If you look at the back end of last year when we were really seeing energy pricing and food inflation come through I had concerns about our products, that people would be looking to save and perhaps downtrade. We haven’t seen that yet – we still can’t fulfill our demand.

“If you look at food service, I’ve seen that drop off a bit – generally across the UK a 20 per cent drop off – but London seems to be a market of its own. It doesn’t seem to be affected by price. It seems to be booming there still.”

Warrendale Wagyu was founded in 2017 and now works with 500 farmer partners to produce a Wagyu-dairy cross product for a growing UK market. It supplies retail chains Aldi and Waitrose. The business processes upwards of 130 cattle a week and has plans to more than double production in the coming years.

Mr Richardson said while there would be increased supplies of Australian beef in the UK under a recently negotiated free-trade agreement, he said it was unlikely to take the edge off Wagyu sales.

“The bulk of our sales are linked into retail customers who have pledges around British sourcing so I hope that they honour those pledges and don’t take opportunity if there is a major price differential to undermine us and what we’ve built,” he said.

“There’s 65 million of us in the UK, there’s quarter of a billion of us in Europe so I think there it’s horses for courses – there will be customers who have been buying Australian Wagyu and Japanese Wagyu and they will continue to want that. But I think there is room for ourselves and the Australians to operate within the UK market.”