Brazil pork meat exports rise in volume but plunge in dollars

Brazilian pork exports have gained significantly in volume in the first nine months of 2015 when compared to the previous year, yet revenues still plunged in the same period.

“When we compare the exports of pork meat in the cumulative period from January to September 2015 with the same period of 2014, we observe that those export volumes increased 7 percent reaching 376,800 tonnes,” Victor Miguel Ayres, adviser of the technical superintendency of the Confederation of Poultry and Livestock, wrote via e-mail.

However, Ayres said revenues fell 17.5 percent during the same period compared with a year earlier, accumulating a final result of US$918 million in 2015.

“This loss of value of pork meat in the world scenario was a reflection of a North American recovery of market share after its livestock, which had suffered episodes of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus in 2014,” Ayres said.

As the North American industry recovered, there was a bigger offer to the world markets, which in some cases countries showed weaker demand from a year earlier.

“[W]hile the U.S. dollar suffered a loss of value of 2.1 percent against the Brazilian real between January and September of 2014, the North American currency gained 47.7 percent against the real in the same period of 2015,” Ayres said.

According to the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil, in partnership with the Center of Advanced Studies of Applied Economics of the University of Sao Paulo (CEPEA), shipments of pork meat from Brazil picked up sharply in July of this year, with July seeing the biggest pork exports from Brazil since 2012.

Russia is one of the countries that has been demanding more pork. Therefore, Russians have increasingly turned to Brazil for products that it could not source in the United States or Europe in relation to economic sanctions over the crisis in Crimea. As a result, Russia has become a destination for about 50 percent of the Brazilian pork exports.

Brazilian pork meat producers are currently looking to expand exports to markets, including Mexico, South Korea, Japan and China, in order to reduce their growing dependence on Russia.