Portugal eyes lucrative Philippine pork market

MANILA, Philippines — Portugal is aiming to tap into the Philippines’ lucrative pork market and expects the country to become a major destination for its meat products.

Filporc, the Portuguese pork sector association, is confident of receiving clearance to export pork products to the Philippines within the year.

Antonio Tavares, the director and representative of Filporc, is leading the campaign to secure authorization for the export of pork products to the Philippines.

“As soon as we have the accreditation, we can start exporting immediately. We have very good facilities in Portugal, very modern facilities so it’s easy to start exporting,” he said.

Portugal is exporting high quality pork meat to China, South Korea and Japan.

“The Philippine market will be very important for us because it’s a growing market…To give you  an idea, the Philippines  ranks second in terms of  the quantity of pork products exported by  the European Union,” Tavares said.

Portugal is looking to export pork products such as fats and offals, which are the top import products of the

Philippines.

Tavares said the Philippines  is “interesting to us because there are some parts of the pig that we don’t  eat in Portugal and Europe and you eat  them here.”

“It’s very important to have this cooperation with the markets like yours that have different gastronomical experience,” he said.

Through its government, Filporc has proposed knowledge sharing about African swine fever (ASF)as a jump-off point to export pork products.

“We are preparing the mission here in the Philippines with some Portuguese experts to transmit our knowledge. We expect to do it in May.  We are only waiting for the logistics, ” Tavares said.

After that, Philippine authorities will also need to go to Portugal  to see what they are doing to control the disease.

“We expect to have the visit in June,” Tavares said.

Filporc, along with Interporc–the Spanish association of the pork sector–has kicked off its campaign “EU Pork, the Smart Choice” to promote high-quality European pork from Spain and Portugal.

The campaign will take place over three years in three Asian markets namely China, Vietnam and the Philippines to promote pork from Spain and Portugal.

Currently, the Philippines ranks as the second-largest meat market by volume in the ASEAN region, following Vietnam, and fifth in Asia, with a projected 32-percent increase in the next five years.