Islamic Inspection Service - SIILHalal

The month saw USD 212 million worth of product shipped from Brazil to that region, up 60% year-on-year. The result is owed to the building of stockpiles for Ramadan.

April saw 338,900 tons of poultry shipped from Brazil, up 34.9% from a year ago, the Brazilian Animal Protein Association (ABPA) said this Thursday (9), with revenue hitting USD 563.9 million, up 17.3%.

Five out of the top ten destinations for poultry from Brazil during the month were Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Egypt and Oman, in that order. Those five countries imported a combined 130.8 million tons, up 51.3% year-on-year according to data from the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce. Combined revenue was USD 212 million, up 60.2%.

Out of those top five Arab destinations, the UAE, Egypt and Oman increased their imports by rates far exceeding the regionwide average. Brazil’s exports to its top 13 Arab markets – including Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Bahrain, Lebanon and Sudan – also went up.

Arab Chamber CEO Tamer Mansour remarked that April results reflect the building of stockpiles in the lead-up to Ramadan – the month in the Islamic calendar that runs from May 5 to June 4 this year.

Although Muslims will fast from sunrise to sunset during this time of year, they will customarily gather for feasts at night. Donating food to the poor is also common, hence the need to bump up imports in order to ensure supplies and keep prices at bay.

It should be noted that up until late March, Brazilian poultry sales to Arab countries had been losing steam, despite marginal increments in revenue. Even Saudi Arabia, which had been buying less and less poultry from Brazil, sprang back in April as sales went up 29.8% year-on-year to 29,000 tons, and revenue climbed 44% to USD 66.4 million.

Year-to-date

Poultry exports from Brazil amounted to 1.28 million tons year-to-date through April, up 0.8% year-on-year, ABPA reported, with revenue going up 1.1% to USD 2.11 billion.

Arab countries imported 359,500 tons worth of poultry from Brazil, up 6.3% year-on-year, with expenditure going up 12% to USD 792.4 million.

In an interview this Thursday in newspaper Valor Econômico, BRF board chairman Pedro Parente said that the Arab world and China are the two most promising regions in when it comes to potentially increasing the company’s sales.

The parent company of brands Sadia and Perdigão, BRF ships unprocessed chicken meat to its proprietary plant in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where the product gets processed and distributed throughout the Middle East. Parente believes this to be “the natural approach” to doing business in the region and in China.

“But we intend to go further than that. Saudi Arabia has an overt policy of increasing domestic production. We believe China will also go this route, but we must begin by securing solid [export] agreements,” Valor quoted him as saying.

Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum

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