MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay has the most expensive cattle in the world, says British abattoir

Roberto Palma, general manager of Breeders & Packers Plant in Durazno

Uruguay has the most expensive cattle in the world in moments when international beef prices tend to slide which makes it very difficult to have a reasonable operation forcing abattoirs to leave workers redundant.

Roberto Palma is General Manager of the British company Breeders & Packers Uruguay that was recently forced to cut the 300 workforce of its ultra-modern meat packing plant by 67.

“We’ll taken them back as soon as things are back to normal but we have two main problems: Uruguay has the most expensive beef in the world, dearer that in Australia, United States, Brazil and other potential exporters which makes it difficult to reach deals in some markets and this is because of cattle prices”, said Palma.

He added this situation “makes business operations bad, we’re loosing money as never before. Uruguay currently has the most expensive cattle in the world when the price of beef internationally is going down which is counter current. At current prices with the deals we have overseas that are excellent, we can’t even cover the cost of cattle”.

Palma also admitted the plant was having problems with the de-boning equipment which “we still haven’t been able to make it tick as a clock”. This has forced Breeders & Packers to lower processing operations.

Nevertheless the cattle prices escalation together with slower beef prices overseas will end impacting the whole meat industry in Uruguay, anticipated Palma, “maybe as soon as next week”.

Palma also pointed out that the staff left redundant is technically fired since they haven’t been working that long in the brand new abattoir and since they haven’t contributed sufficiently they are not entitled to unemployment insurance.

“We don’t have any problems with the staff, it’s simply we don’t have sufficient fat cattle for slaughtering, a problem other plants are also suffering”, added the BPU general manager.

“Once we solve problems, the business changes to positive automatically the (redundant) workers will be recovering their jobs: we simply slowed down and were forced to such a decision”.

“B&PU is not licensed to export to all high value markets but to a few that have become complicated because of falling international prices and too much beef available, which is something all members of the industry in Uruguay are suffering”, said Palma.