The CEO of Tirlán has said that security of food supply “will not be there in the same way” if consumers are “not prepared” to pay more for food.
Seán Molloy was speaking this week at the launch of Bord Bia’s Export Performance and Prospects report, when he suggested that consumers are “going to have to get used to paying more for food”.
“To my mind, for too long, food has not been priced at the point it needs to be priced at, and I think that’s something we’re going to have to be very conscious of into the future,” Molloy said.
The Tirlán boss said that consumers will have to pay more for food in order to secure the demands they have for food producers.
These demands, according to Molloy, include “the highest safety and food quality standards in the world…and very, very high sustainability standards”.
“If our consumers want to be sure that, whether it’s a snow storm, or a pandemic, or whatever it might be, that they can still go out to their store and reach out and have every product on the shelf…they’re going to have to pay for them,” he said.
“And I think we are into a point where if they’re not prepared to do that, than the guarantee of security of supply will not be there in the same way it has been in the past, and that’s something that is a new thought process for us in the industry that we need to be very convinced on,” Molloy added.
He also suggested that the right price for food is necessary for the sector to “attract the very best skills and talents and people”.
He acknowledged that Ireland is a high-cost economy, which comes with a developed economy.
However, he said: “Labour is a high cost, but we need to be able to reward labour. If we don’t, we won’t get it, be that on farm or indeed in a processing entity.
“Our processing costs are at the higher end of the European scale. We’re going to have to spend substantially at farm and indeed in processing, on sustainability infrastructure to reach the regulatory requirements that are there in front of us. So competitiveness will be an increasing challenge,” Molloy said.
The Tirlán CEO added: “That said, we’re exporting today to 140 countries…We must be doing something right to be able to achieve that. We must be able to compete in those markets or we wouldn’t be able to achieve that, but we can’t lose the eye on the ball of needing to be competitive.”