Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, has launched his Department’s first Market Access Annual report, which reports on significant progress on implementation of an Action Plan on market access, published in April 2017.
The report highlights the successes over the last year and a half including beef access to China, wider meat market access to Kuwait and Qatar and significant ongoing work in relation to the dairy, seafood a, d live animal sectors.
Enhanced Focus
Releasing the report, Creed praised the ‘painstaking work’ across a number of levels that built the reported successes,
“What clearly emerges from the report is the considerable work being completed by a very wide range of staff, right across my Department, whose work impacts upon market access and trade,” Creed said.
“This enhanced focus on market access and trade is a key part of my Department’s response to the challenges posed by Brexit, and is very much in line with the market development theme under Foodwise 2025.”
Creed wanted that despite the added urgency as a result of Brexit, opening up new international markets to Irish food producers is a long term strategy and “these new markets can take time to develop and grow”.
According to the report, which contains case studies on individual companies’ experiences in new markets, agri-food exports to countries outside the EU have increased from around €2.7 billion to €3.6 billion in the period 2014 to 2018.
Celebrating the report, Creed took the opportunity to announce the locations for Government Agri-Food trade missions during 2019, which include trips to Turkey in early March, China in May, Japan and South Korea in June, and Algeria and Egypt in November.
© 2019 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Aidan O’Sullivan. Click subscribe to sign up for the Checkout print edition.
