São Paulo – The drop in poultry exports in January shouldn’t hurt the sector’s performance at the end of 2015. The executive president of the Brazilian Association of Animal Protein (ABPA, in the Portuguese acronym), Francisco Turra, said this Thursday (05th) in an interview to ANBA that the weak sales to countries that are dependent on oil exports affected the performance in the month. However, the Brazilian poultry sector is standing on “good” grounds and should end the year without “excess” inventories.
Shipments in January 2015 stood at 277,700 tons, down 9.8% over the same month in 2014. Revenues stood at US$ 494.4 million, a drop of 14.3% in the same comparison. According to Turra, Russia, Venezuela and Angola, all oil-export-dependent countries, imported much less poultry in January. The sales for Angola, for instance, dropped 50%.
“We noticed this [drop of sales] not only here [poultry sector], but we didn’t expect that it would be happen so fast, since food usually are more resistant to these variations. But we were not scared because our sector has strong fundamentals and we’ll end the year on pace”, said Turra.
According to the ABPA president, exports to Saudi Arabia, the leading buyer of Brazilian poultry, were down 19%, but this bears no connection with the low crude oil prices. “They enjoy extremely low oil production costs and a solid economy. In November and December, Saudi Arabia imported a lot of poultry from Brazil, therefore it is possible that they consumed their stockpiles in January,” he said.
In January, Brazil exported 48,500 tons to Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates imported 22,800 tons, up 11% from January 2014. Other Arab countries such as Jordan also stepped up their imports. “The Arab market is a solid one as far as Brazilian exporters go; they have a high degree of loyalty towards us. This or that country will increase its purchases in one month or another, but this relates to inventory building for some specific reason,” he said.
Next week, Turra and the ABPA are attending the Gulfood fair, in Dubai, the UAE, the Middle East’s leading food industry event.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani & Gabriel Pomerancblum
