By Scott Wright
A SCOTTISH food processing company has underlined its confidence that produce from these shores is back on menus around the world, despite the continuing pandemic.
AK Stoddart, which operates sites in Ayrshire and West Lothian, has struck a £1 million export deal for its beef in Japan, giving a major boost to its overseas sales hopes.
The company sent an initial 20-tonne container of beef products to the country last month, which it said would be followed by further shipments in the next eight to 10 weeks.
It hailed the potential of the lucrative Japanese market, and the position of Japan as a gateway to other territories in the Far East. The UK was given the nod to recommence beef exports to Japan following a 23-year ban, stemming from the BSE crisis, in January last year.
Grant Moir, managing director of AK Stoddart, said: “As restaurants start to re-open, we are ready to supply some of the top chefs with some of the best beef in the world. This deal with Japan marks an important step forward for AK Stoddart’s export plans and we will look to grow and expand on this.”
Mr Moir added: “Brexit negotiations have opened up opportunities such as tapping into the US market, which will position us as the first and only beef processor in Scotland to be working with the States. But it has also thrown up challenges in trading and negotiations, it is a lengthy and timely auditing process to be approved for export to Japan and indeed the US.
“Taking the US in particular, there’s a large expat community and affiliation with Scottish culture, the importance to the Scottish economy of having trade links with countries such as the US and Japan is clear and we are working hard to navigate and adapt our business for export as the Brexit process ensues.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here