Changing composition of Australian beef exports
AUSTRALIA - Beef is now Australia’s highest value rural commodity export, with a variety of beef cuts exported to all regions of the world. The composition of these exports has changed significantly over the past five years.Of the 909,000 tonnes of beef exported in 2005, 61% was shipped as frozen, grassfed beef, with 40% of this sent to the US market for manufacturing purposes. Almost 18% of Australian beef exported was chilled, grainfed beef, with the high priced/high quality Japanese market the dominant buyer (88% of the total).
In the past five years, exports of quality ox/steer beef have expanded rapidly to represent almost half of all exports, relegating the basic *A* beef classification to only 27% of the total.
Source: mla.com.au