What’s the Beef with Beef?

There may be a lot of chatter these days about meat production: How sustainable it is, how it can be substituted and how the many added increased costs for both livestock and manufacturing can be overcome. But at the end of the day the demand is not declining.

American Meat Production has become a thriving export business. The Meat export numbers from 2022H1 showed significant increase – especially with beef. Up 6% from the previous year.

The number of cattle in the US is declining, however. In January 22 there were 91.9m head of cattle, out of which 20.1m were beef cows. That’s down 2% from previous year. And the summer drought 2022 may have decreased this number even further come January 2023.

The American export primarily goes to Asia – Japan, South Korea and China – and secondary to the neighboring countries of Canada and Mexico.

So where does all that meat come from?

For the US Meat Processors this could prove to be a challenge, when outside demand has risen so much and pushes the price of meat upwards. More so than just the general inflation. US produced meat goes to China, and Brazilian meat goes to US. This is a difficult supply chain to sustain.

The market fluctuations and costs on meat have shown high volatility. But when China lifts the embargo on meat from Brazil, hopefully prices will begin to settle. In the meantime, it makes sense for Meat Processors to optimize the costs within their control. Getting the packaging operations automated, identifying the best and most cost-efficient trays for the product and increase capacity wherever possible. Or build facilities closer to the demand – this is seen in Europe with Danish Crown announcing a new factory in the UK to produce 300 metric tons of bacon every week.

QUPAQ are the leader in tray denesting innovation and have a long-proven track-record of success with thousands of installations all around the world. If you want to ramp up and increase your growth on new markets or be better prepared to withstand the impact of external cost levels – either by adding flexibility (High Mix, Low Volume) or increasing capacity – QUPAQ are always ready for a talk.

We could begin by evaluating the trays you use and give you a test result on how much you will gain?