The British Game Alliance (BGA) has secured its first major overseas trade agreement for 250,000 birds to be exported for use in retail and high-end restaurants in Hong Kong and Macau this season.
The deal with the luxury meat purveyor Sutherland will be for a mix of pheasant, partridge and grouse for this coming season. Sutherland plans to create its own game products for the Asian and expat markets, in retailers such as Dairy Farm and ParkNShop, as well as the raw product for hotels such as the Manderin Oriental and Grand Hyatt.
Romeo Alfonso, managing director of Sutherland’s MeatLab which supplies top hotels, retailers and casinos said: “We are very pleased to have secured the exclusive license agreement with the BGA for the Hong Kong and Macau market. We look forward to establishing and growing an exciting new market for assured British game, promoting sustainably and ethically shot game.”
Tom Adams, managing director of the BGA explained: “Along with a pipeline of other overseas deals and significant new UK distribution channels we are now seeing the demand which our sector needs to drive viability and growth, in order to bring back a value to game.”
Working with Defra and the Department for International Trade, the BGA secured this new market and continues to replicate the trade mission in the recently visited Japan, as well as Canada, where they plan to visit in November.
Simon Wilkinson, managing director of Lincolnshire Game added: “We are proud to be working as a BGA approved processor, in unity with our BGA assured estates, creating new opportunities for Assured British Game worldwide such as our recent partnership with Sutherland HK. We are confident this forward-thinking approach will secure a future for a regulated, global, game meat marketplace.”
The BGA serves a dual role as marketing board and industry self-regulator. With nearly 600 estates signed up as members in just 16 months, this represents over a third of the UK feathered game sector. The vision of a self-regulated industry with strong demand for all its products was backed earlier this month by 38 MPs who co-signed a letter welcoming the BGA’s growth and encouraging all shoots to join.
Yet there is still a long journey to go according to the BGA’s chairman, Ivan Shenkman: “The RSPB recently had a discussion for MPs labelled ‘Rethinking grouse moor management’. That’s a warning that if we don’t reshape our sector then others will do it for us. That’s why all the shoots which are thinking of the future are joining the BGA.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
