Exports of poultry meat by Brazil in 2019 were almost 3% higher in 2019 than in the previous 12 months. While this trend is expected to continue, the nation’s poultry producers are facing higher costs.
Last year, Brazil exported just over 4.21 million metric tons (mmt) of poultry meat. Compared to the 2018 figure of 4.10 mmt, this represented an increase of 2.8%, according to the Brazilian Association of Animal Protein (ABPA). At over US$6.99 billion, revenue from the trade in 2019 was 6.4% higher than in the previous year.
During December, 391,900 metric tons (mt) of poultry meat products (fresh and processed) were exported by Brazil — 11.2% above the volume for the same month in 2018. The month’s revenue was US$636 million, which is a year-on-year increase of 9.6%.
ABPA’s executive director Ricardo Santin attributed the strong performance partly to the African swine fever crisis in China. In 2019, Brazil achieved record exports of poultry meat to China, with the trade picking up towards the end of the year.
International demand for Brazilian poultry meat also strengthened in other countries. Compared to 2018, sales to Yemen increased 24% (to 105,900 mt for the year), to the United Arab Emirates by 10% (314,100 mt), and to Japan by 7% (424,000 mt).
With no end in sight to the pressure on global meat markets, ABPA president Francisco Turra commented that Brazilian poultry meat exports would continue to rise during 2020.
One month ago, ABPA was forecasting that total Brazilian chicken meat production would reach 13.15 mmt in 2019. This is 2.3% higher than the figure of 12.85 mmt for the previous year.
A recent report from the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) forecast a 2.0% expansion in chicken meat production by Brazil in 2019, and a further 2.5% for this year.
Rising costs of broiler production in Brazil
For the last two months of 2019, the country’s chicken production cost index (ICPFrango) exceeded 231 points. This equates to an increase of 6% in average overall costs over the year.
The ICPFrango index was created by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and the National Food Supply Agency (Conab). The ICPFrango score represents typical broiler production costs for a ventilated poultry shed in the state of Paraná, and the index was set at 100 in 2011.
Of the total costs of broiler production, feed accounted for 68.8% in the ICPFrango index for December of 2019. Although feed costs had dropped slightly from the previous month, the average was more than 4% higher than at the start of 2019. Over the same period, the cost of day-old chicks increased by 0.7%, and labor by almost than 0.6%. All other cost categories also rose, but by less than 0.2%.
