You name it, seas and planes carry it
Just before and after the first-ever G20 summit held in South America, beef and salmon exports from South America to the USA received a major boost. They were transported by air and ship.
The USA is a key factor making Argentinian beef big again. On the fringes of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires at the beginning of December last year, 17-year-old trade restrictions for this type of meat were revoked, which meant that the high demand in North America for this agricultural product could be stilled in time for the end-of-year festivities. American Airlines Cargo was one of the fastest out of the starting gates; in less than two weeks it transported around 6 t of beef from Argentina to Miami.
Lorena Sandoval, AA Cargo’s freight sales director for Latin America and Miami, explained that “our team was ready for the first flight just days after the regulations were changed.” The forwarder Jet Cargo and Swift Argentina, a meat industry producer and distributor established in 1907, were AA Cargo’s local partners for the first consignments.
Not only South American meat is in demand; fish from the continent is also highly sought-after in the USA. Latam Cargo is establishing new flights from Santiago de Chile to Chicago IL (USA), to cater to demand for salmon. The first service to the airline’s sixth US destination is set to take off on 19 February. Latam Cargo already operates a 465 sqm reefer storage facility in Chicago, where there is room for expansion, if required.
There is strong demand for South American salmon in Asia too, which is easily reachable from the Chicago O’Hare hub (with latter handling 1.7 million t in the eleven months to November 2018, or +4.7%). In 2014 Chile, the region’s largest salmon exporter, sold 37 t a week in Asia. Last year this figure came to 700 t. Latam Cargo transports the sensitive cargo on its passenger and freighter flights through its service called ‘perishable salmon’.
Most of Chile’s agricultural exports to the USA continue to take the ship north, however. Its first consignment of winter fruit reached Wilmington DE on 27 December. Trans Global Shipping’s reefer vessel Star Best loaded around 6,000 t of grapes, plums, peaches, nectarines and apricots in Valparaiso, Coquimbo and Caldera. The cargo was made up of no less than 676,000 boxes. Last year’s five-month season saw a total of 12.5 million boxes handled in the US port.
Northern Norway – Eastern Asia
Argentina is not the only country that is now allowed to export meat to the USA again; and Chile is not the only salmon exporter to China. The quashing of restrictions on the import of Norwegian salmon into China has triggered a leap in the Scandinavian fishing industry (see also page 26 of ITJ 37-38 / 2018). Oslo airport as well as other handling centres in the nation’s regions of origin want to benefit from this development. The Norwegian media has reported that contact with the provinces of Guangzhou and Hainan was intensified in 2018, with the result that Boeing B777Fs or even B747Fs may fly 50 to 100 t of salmon directly from Harstad / Narvik (EVE) to China every week from April onwards.
