Bord Bia testing marketing potential for Irish beef in Europe

Bord Bia is ‘concept-testing’ the potential for Irish beef in a number of European countries, with the aim of launching a marketing campaign on the continent.

A spokesperson for Bord Bia confirmed to AgriLand that it was exploring the possibility of raising interest in Irish produce in four countries.

We placed a request for tender towards the end of last year to explore the potential for driving interest, awareness and sales of Irish suckler beef in four European markets. We expect to have the results in the near future and, depending on the findings, will move the project on to the next stage.

The spokesperson confirmed that those countries are Belgium, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

Suckler cows

Yesterday, AgriLand reported that there was 951,397 suckler cows registered with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine as of the end of December 2018.

Minister Michael Creed provided the figures to independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice, and also supplied an exact definition of a suckler beef cow.

The minister defined a suckler beef cow as: “A beef cow who has calved at least once in her lifetime by the end of December each calendar year.”

The December 2018 figure is almost 80,000 higher than in the same month the previous year, going by that definition.