By: Ngiinomenwa-vali Erastus
Namibia consumers have signalled to the local producers that they want more fresh and processed pork as they have gone as far as six European countries and South Africa to buy 3 339.4 tons of pork.
This is according to the six-month pork consumption data as compiled by the Meat Board of Namibia released this month.
The imported pork products are fresh pork and processed pork meat. The country went as far as Europe (UK, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, and Spain), while in Africa, most of the pork products were imported from South Africa.
Namibian producers (pig abattoirs) were only able to slaughter a total of 22 863 pigs, equivalent to 2 176 tons of fresh pork.
However, this production could only cater for 47 per cent of local fresh pork consumption required by the Namibian consumers.
This supply gap from local producers necessitated the import of 2 406 tons of fresh pork to cover the gap.
Adding processed products, a total of 3 339.4 tons was imported into Namibia during the first half of 2022.
With Meat Board explained that the dominance of local producers concerning fresh pork was reversed in favour of pork originating from foreign sources.
It is not only the producers/farmers who could not cater for the local demand for fresh pork meat, the country lacks value addition capacity too.
From the imported processed pork for the six months of the year, 960.9 tons of the country imported 960.9 tons of cooked pork and uncooked processed pork (uncooked processed pork made up 26% of pork imports).
Most of the money, however, went to pork offal imports 46 per cent of this total was composed of pork offal, while 32 201 kilograms of bacon was also imported.
The Meat Board of Namibia has indicated that it is implementing the Pork Market Share Promotion Scheme to ensure the development of the local pork sector so that reliance on imports can be reduced.
The pork ceiling price remained depressed for the first half of 2022 due to an oversupply of pork meat in neighbouring South Africa that resulted in a much lower Red Meat Abattoir Association (RMAA) average price, which serves as the benchmark price for the calculation of the pork ceiling price.
On average, the pork ceiling price was N$35.94/kg, 6.87 per cent less than the level observed in the first half of 2021. Email: erastus@thevillager.com.na
