The Canadian Pork Council suggests, for Canada’s pork industry to take full advantage of the market potential offered in China, it will need to be prepared to expand and modernize its current production capacity.
Representatives of the Canadian pork industry accompanied federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence McCauley on a ten day three city trade mission to China this month to meet with potential new customers and explore new marketing opportunities.
Gary Stordy, the Manager of Public Relations with the Canadian Pork Council, says the Chinese market is incredibly important and it’s been building over the last several years quite quickly.
It really is a country that has yet to be tapped in a sense where there are Chinese companies regularly wanting to build relationships with Canadian processors and traders just because there is a demand. Right now, frankly, if we had more production taking place, more animals going into the slaughter capacity, we would have a market for it.
Some of the Achilles heel trying to maximize it, moving forward on a domestic basis, we need to create the environment where producers are confident in their industry, want to reinvest, have their children participate in hog production and ultimately build and reconstruct barns so that we can be more efficient but also replace some of the existing production facilities that are really at a point where they need to be replaced.
~ Gary Stordy, Canadian Pork Council
Stordy says Chinese customers want to be engaged. He says they want to see the Canadian product and how it’s raised right through the supply chain from the farm up through processing and feel connected with what they’re buying and build a level of trust with the company that’s providing it.
