First shipment of chicken products from Indonesia to Singapore to depart on Wednesday: Agriculture ministry
The first batch to be exported will comprise frozen chicken meat and not live chickens.
A chicken vendor waits for customers at a market in Surabaya on January 13, 2022. (Photo: AFP/Juni Kriswanto)
JAKARTA: Indonesia will begin exporting chicken products to Singapore on Wednesday (Jul 13), said a senior official at the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture.
Mdm Tri Mela Sari, a director at the ministry told CNA that the first shipment will comprise frozen chicken meat, supplied by the Indonesian arm of Thailand-based food conglomerate Charoen Pokphand. The export volume is not yet known.
“We will send the first batch of chicken meat bound for Singapore on Wednesday, Jul 13. We will have a press conference at the CPI (Charoen Pokphand Indonesia) office. More details will be announced at the press conference,” she said on Tuesday.
According to the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), three companies from Indonesia were given permission to export chicken meat and chicken meat products into the country.
Two of the companies are Indonesian subsidiaries of Charoen Pokphand, while the other is a subsidiary of Indonesian frozen food giant Japfa Comfeed.
Mdm Mela Sari said on Tuesday that two of these companies are still in talks with their Singaporean counterparts.
“The negotiations are B2B (business-to-business) in nature. How soon the other two (companies) can start sending their chicken products will depend on talks between companies in both countries,” she added.
The ministry’s director of animal product processing and marketing said that there are 12 other Indonesian companies which are currently seeking permission to export chicken products to Singapore. All applications have been submitted to the SFA.
The SFA has said that individual establishments and farms needed to be evaluated and approved, with detailed documentary evaluations and on-site audits for verification, before they are given permission to export food to Singapore.
Singapore imported 214,400 tonnes of chicken meat last year, about a third were from Malaysia.
Malaysia has put in place an export ban of up to 3.6 million chickens a month, following supply and pricing issues domestically, with some chicken traders selling whole chickens above the price ceiling to cover their costs.
Following the export ban, Singapore announced that it will source chickens from other places, including Indonesia and Thailand.
The SFA announced on Jun 30 that it has added Indonesia as a new source for the import of chilled, frozen and processed chicken.
According to an estimate by the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture last month, Indonesia’s chicken meat production throughout in 2022 is expected to reach 5.9 million tonnes.
The domestic demand for chicken meat is estimated to be 5.3 million tonnes this year. This means that there would be an average monthly surplus of around 50,000 tonnes.
