Meat+Poultry - December 2018 - 38

GLOBAL MARKETS

Charlie McElhinney
(left) has been a grassfed beef producer for
most of his life. Gabriel
Lynch (right) is Donegal
Procurement Manager
for Foyle Food Group.

38

"We also do value-added processing, and we
do multi-pack for our packaging format where we
work very, very closely with our customers, and
everything is produced to their specifications,"
she says. "We tailor everything for them."
Kepak has specific brands around the
Angus and Hereford breeds of cattle. The
largest amount of cattle produced in Ireland
are continental breeds such as Charolais,
Limousins and Simmenthals. Slaughter-ready,
or dead weight is roughly 340 kg. on average.
"Your Angus and your Hereford would typically
be a little bit lighter, maybe closer to the 300- to
310-mark carcass weight," says Aoife Ryan,
head of Project Management Office. "Other
breeds, such as Belgian Blues, would be a good
deal heavier."
Celtic Beef is Kepak's retail brand in the
US, and the company is the only Irish beef
producer to have a retail brand in the US. It is
sold through Wellesley, Massachusetts-based
Roche Bros. "They're predominantly in affluent
areas that have an Irish link to it in heritage."
Antoniades says Kepak's game plan is to
stay within areas that have Irish links because
it's more than enough volume for the company
by doing that. "Going out further than that,"
she explains, "it's just another story that has to
be told from the start."
Kepak began sales of Celtic Beef three
years ago, mainly focusing on retail. Since
then, Kepak has added strip, ribeye, filet
and just this year, corned beef which sold

MEAT+ POULTRY | 12.18 | www.meatpoultry.com

out. Antoniades says pitching Irish beef to
American consumers has been a positive
challenge for Kepak. She says, "...in Europe, I
feel like the story of Irish beef is known; we're
known for having a natural and high-quality
product that for a very long time we haven't
had to go out and sell that. That's your baseline
- people understand it."
"When we were [in Nashville] they needed
no convincing; everyone loves their meat, but
everyone loves American meat," she adds.
"That made us really home in and think 'why
is our beef as good as we say it is,' especially if
you have no-antibiotics-ever and organic and
all these offerings. It really did make us think
about what we're asking."

FOYLE FIRST
About a three-hour drive from Kepak is County
Donegal where Paul Armstrong works as group
commercial director for Foyle Food Group.
Foyle Food Group and ABP Food Group
were the first Irish meat processors to receive
US Dept. of Agriculture approval to export beef
to the US. "We were either lucky or unlucky,"
Armstrong says. "But it was good because
we were successful." The company has been
exporting beef to the US and Canada for the
past four to five years.
Foyle is structured in three key divisions -
slaughter/debone; further processing which is
the retail packing plant and Eco, which is the
rendering business.
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