Beef exports on track to break records in 2024

The big four have made their presence felt in beef exports as numbers look set to break records this year, but there’s some surprising customers.

Australia’s beef industry is on target for its biggest export year ever with the July to September totals setting a record.

Buoyed by big figures in July and August, where monthly highs were posted, the industry’s stellar year is on track despite September beef exports of 114,000 tonnes down by 6 per cent on the previous month.

But they were still high enough to keep the record beef exports figure in its sights by the year’s end.

And while the big four – the United States, Japan, South Korea and China – continue to buy up big, the diversity of markets has also pushed international sales volumes up.

In the most recent Cattle industry Projections, Meat and Livestock Australia forecast the nation’s beef exports would total 1.36 million tonnes this year.

MLA global market analyst Tim Jackson said the United States remained Australia’s biggest customer, taking 52 per cent more this year than last.

Much of this was grass-fed beef, Mr Jackson said, 262,214 tonnes heading to America so far in 2024, but there had also been a lift in grain-fed exports to that market too, up 102 per cent to 9980 tonnes.

Mr Jackson said away from the major markets, growth was also being seen in comparatively smaller beef export destinations like Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.

“Indonesia is actually our fifth biggest beef market, and have imported a record amount this year to date of 57,469 tonnes,” he said.

“Thailand and Vietnam have each imported more than 15,000 tonnes.”

Collectively, the countries in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), have taken 121,500 tonnes this year, which Mr Jackson said was “quite substantial”.

“If you look at the export figures for 2004, you would have seen more than 80 per cent of the market share taken by the United States and Japan, but over the past 20 years, there has been a big increase in diversification,” he said.

StoneX Australian livestock and commodities manager Ripley Atkinson said the third quarter export results had surpassed the previous record set in the similar period in 2014 by 4 per cent.

“Year to September exports are running 25 per cent or 190,500 tonnes ahead of year-to-date volumes last year and are now only 7400 tonnes off the record year to date levels set in 2015,” Mr Atkinson said.

“In 2015, volumes eased in the back end of the year.

“It’s a similar trend to what we are observing in 2024, although monthly exports have stayed stronger relative to 2015.”