Meat and fibre stars in MPI’s forecast export earnings

15 December 2015 Follow us

Meat and fibre industry the star in MPI’s forecast export earnings

Federated Farmers welcomes the release today of the Ministry for Primary Industries’ latest forecast for primary sector export revenue, which predicts growth of $1.9 billion and total earnings of $37.6 billion for the year to 30 June 2016.

Underpinning this growth is New Zealand’s meat and fibre industry, which accounts for $910 million or almost half of total primary sector export growth.

“While it has been a challenging year for lamb, both beef and wool are performing strongly and this is reflected in MPI’s strong forecasts for the industry,” says Federated Farmers Meat & Fibre Industry Chair Rick Powdrell.

“Our sheep and beef farmers continue to perform strongly, with significant increases in average weights, and this is enabling us to capitalise on strong market conditions such as those we are currently seeing for beef exports to the US.”

Federated Farmers is also pleased to see forecast growth in export earnings for the arable sector, up 20% ($36 million) to $213 million. Dairy exports are forecast to drop 4% to 13.5 billion in a year of low milk prices.

ENDS

The full MPI report is available here.

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