Farming: France offers fresh market for Scottish lamb exports

IT HAS been a quite a battle to get French buyers of Scottish lamb to acknowledge where the meat comes from when it appears on the shelves of their supermarkets.

But David Chiffoleau, Quality Meat Scotland's representative in France, said this week there was now increased recognition of the Scotch Lamb label and more than 100,000 branded packs in one supermarket alone this season this season.

Now having broken through that barrier, the same team that have managed to get the branded Scotch lamb packs on the shelves are now planning to do the same with Scottish-sourced Aberdeen Angus beef.

Speaking at SIAL, the major food fair held in Paris, Simon Dowling, from Scotbeef in Bridge of Allan, revealed that, along with sixth-generation French meat company Macquet, they would be supplying labelled Aberdeen Angus beef to some of the major supermarket chains in France. Laurent Macquet said he was sure that the Scottish Aberdeen Angus pack with the breed's worldwide reputation for marbled meat would "ring a bell" with consumers. Scotbeef have been in the meat export market for the past 40 years and currently export more than 11 million of beef and lamb annually. Traditionally they have been strong in the Italian market but Dowling believed there was great scope within the French supermarket sector.

Commenting on the current trading in the export market, he admitted the value of the euro was helping the trade but he had been very encouraged by the number of new customers from all over Europe coming forward for Scottish meat.

"This has been a successful show," he said.

"We have enquiries from all over Europe. They are not wanting kilos (of meat] they are talking truckloads."

Chiffoleau said the supermarket purchasing process in France made it more difficult to make a big impact quickly as, in contrast with the UK supermarkets with their centralised buying systems, French store managers had a big say in what went on the shelves

Part of the promotion of Scottish meat in supermarkets has been directly supported by QMS with in-store demonstrators highlighting the difference in the meats on offer.

At the Auchan Osny supermarket, Christiane Siebert compared the lighter, almost pinky coloured lamb from France saying it was likely to have come from the Roquefort area where the sheep are mostly kept inside all the time.

Buyers were attracted to the deeper red flesh in the Scottish packs, she suggested.