UK: Sheep meat imports drop on the year, with exports down on December

Overall levels of sheep meat imports have very marginally fallen to 2,370 tonnes for January, this is a small decline from December’s levels. This marginal change in volumes resulted from a fall of nearly 180 tonnes (20.5%) from Ireland, and an increase of 191 tonnes (30.8%) imported from New Zealand. Looking to year-on-year volumes, there has been a substantial overall decline of nearly 2,000 tonnes (45.6%) from January 2022. The vast majority of this decline can be attributed to falling imports from New Zealand, down 1,260 tonnes (60.9%) from January 2022. The drop in volume imported from New Zealand was most prevalent in the autumn of 2022, with subsequent lower import volumes remaining relatively equal. Similar trends are seen with Australian imports, down 838 tonnes (55.5%) for the same time period. Looking at imports from a product perspective, there have been large drops in some categories year-on-year. From January 2022, there has been a decline of 727 tonnes for frozen ...