Saudi Arabia once again “open and ready” for live sheep by sea trade
Australian sheep producers can finally ship live sheep back to Saudi Arabia following an 11-year hiatus.
The rich live sheep export market into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is once again open for business following a decade in the wilderness for Australian exporters.
The destination was once the third biggest Middle Eastern destination for local producers with more than 550,000 head exported in 2009, but Australian live sheep have not been exported to the Persian Gulf principality since 2012.
The once $100 million trade was stopped by the Saudi government after it took exception to the federal government’s introduction of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System and refused to sign up to the program on the grounds it compromised its sovereignty.
But LiveCorp chair Troy Setter told a recent Senate estimates hearing that access to the Saudi Arabia is once again “open and ready for trade”.
“When Saudi Arabia was open between 1989 and 2012, they did 12.7 million sheep,” he said.
“Currently, Saudi Arabia imports eight million livestock per annum, which is a mix of sheep, goats, cattle and camels.”
Mr Setter said around half of that figure were sheep and Australia was now positioned to take advantage of the demand with “ESCAS being already set up in country”.
“Our belief would be that those facilities would be processing not just Australian sheep but sheep from other markets, and they would benefit from the ESCAS system that Australia has,” he said.
“We’ve seen that in other markets where Australia has ESCAS in local abattoirs where local cattle, livestock or sheep from other markets get that same treatment.”
Department officials told estimates Emanuel Exports had received all the relevant approvals to begin exporting to Saudi Arabia, while another three applications were being assessed and finalised.
Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council chief executive Mark Harvey-Sutton said exporters had been working through the ESCAS requirements over a number of years to enable a restart of Saudi sheep sales.
“It is good to see the movement on the resumption of trade. This will open up an important market for producers and is another vote of confidence in Australia’s live sheep trade and reinforces the fact this is not a declining industry,” he said.
The Senate hearing was told that sheep exports increased 41 per cent year-on-year, with 489,000 head exported in 2021-22 according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data and more than 690,000 in 2022-23.
Meanwhile, local producers are facing plummeting stock prices, a backlog of animals currently on farms and a federal government plan to phase-out the live sheep export by sea industry.
The trade to Saudi Arabia can operate anytime outside a wholesale ban on sheep exports to the Middle East through the baking Northern Summer period from June 1 to September 14.
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