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Author: Norman Dunn, FoodFarm Communications, Germany
The Romanian chicken meat and egg sector may not have invented vertical integration, but the major producers in the country have taken the system much further than many. This is where the top four poultry meat processors all have their own parent breeding flocks, hatcheries, feed mills, processing plants and cold stores. Many of these processors also have their own fleets of freezer trucks on the road distributing the produce, as well as their own chains of retail outlets selling their goods to consumers.
Such control is good when there is strong demand for farm-to-fork hygiene supervision and complete traceability - standards that are increasingly important in Romania as it shakes-off the low prices and poor demand caused by the avian influenza that hit in 2004-2006.
Additionally, it’s also economically attractive to have your own stores as alternative retail markets when the top supermarket chains start to squeeze production and processing margins in chicken meat, as they are now doing in Romania. It certainly appears that Romanians are strongly backing their own chicken meat industry. First returns for 2009 from the Romanian Association of Poultry Breeders (UCPR) report sales increases of over 30% for the first five months of the year compared with the same period of 2008.
In fact, one of the most innovative processors, Ave Impex from Satu Mare in northwest Transylvania, says its turnover in the same period has soared by 52%. The recession has a lot to do with consumers choosing the most cost-efficient meat, according to the experts World Poultry spoke with.
Though, there’s a growing feeling, too, that the healthy eating wave is definitely breaking on Romania’s shores. Out of all meats sold in Romania, chicken meat is the only one to have increased sales in 2009, as yet. Dairy product sales, for example, have slumped by more than 20%. Own-production of chicken meat has been slowly increasing between 2006 (266,000 t) and 2008 (270,000 t). Even from January – April this year deliveries topped 110,000 t, according to UCPR. Total consumption in 2008, with imports mainly from Brazil, but also from countries including Poland, the Netherlands and Hungary, was over 380,000 t (more than double the figure for 2000). Market watchers reckon 400,000 t will be a reasonable estimate for total consumption by the end of 2009. This includes around 15% imports and would mean per capita consumption for this 22.4 million population country that is the seventh-largest in the EU-27 reaching 17.8 kg, which is a 25% increase over the 2007 figure.
Currently, self-sufficiency in Romanian chicken meat production is around 70%.
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