UK beef trade sees year-on-year increase in January

Imports

In January, UK fresh and frozen beef imports came to 17,600 tonnes according to HMRC. This followed seasonal trends with a month-on-month (MOM) decline of 17.8% compared to December's total. Fresh and frozen boneless beef continued to make up the majority of beef imports, consisting of 86.7% of the total, in line with the 2022 average.

Meanwhile when compared to January 2022, imports were up 6.7%. The main reason behind this this was imports of fresh beef from Ireland as the volume imported across the Irish Sea totalled 9,050 tonnes for the month, a 27% rise year-on-year (YOY). For more detail on Irish beef, check out our recent article looking at historical and projected Irish beef trends.

Greater volumes of fresh beef to the UK outweighed the 10.2% decrease in frozen beef imports, which stood at just 6,300 tonnes in January (HMRC). As the EU accounts for the majority of frozen beef imports, reductions from exporters like France and Spain greatly contributed to this. Most notably, the Netherlands saw a 71.2% fall in imports YOY, coming to just 164 tonnes in January. Yet we did see imports of German frozen beef increase by 21.5% YOY, totalling 1,250 tonnes. This continues the trend of a shift in frozen beef supply seen throughout 2022.

With the potential for imports to reduce by 2% on the year in 2023, we could see imports dampened over the coming months.