Austria exports increased in 2018
“Austria’s milk exports rose by 6.9% to €936 million in the first nine months of 2018, reaching a record high. This shows that the quality strategy of the Austrian dairy industry abroad is successful,” claims the president of the Association of Austrian Milk Processors (VÖM), Helmut Petschar, after studying the latest foreign trade statistics of Statistics Austria.
However, it is not just exports that have risen. Imports also rose by 7.6% to €619 million in the first nine months, reflecting the high level of competition on the international milk market. Overall, a positive foreign trade balance increased by 5.6% to €317 million in Austria’s favour.
The most important export product continues to be cheese with volumes rising from 105,000 tons to 115,000 tons, which caused income equaling €460 million, while imports were slightly lower at 91,000 tons at €357 million.
The second most important product in dairy trade is liquid dairy products, which, with a slight increase in volumes, produced an export value of €221 million, while increasing volumes were imported.
Fermented products were exported to the extent of 100,000 tons and yielded €107 million, while products were imported for €39 million.
Both in terms of sales and volume, exports of milk powder, in particular special milk powder varieties with good prices, had an export value €48 million, while cheap products were imported for €36 million.
For whey products, 82,000 tons were exported for €84 million, while 44,000 tons imported at €35 million.
Butter had an import surplus of 13,000 tons, with 2,600 tons exported at better prices.
“In recent years the Austrian dairy industry has invested a great deal in the extremely high quality of its products in farm production and processing. Consumers at home and abroad value high quality. This makes it all the more important to increasingly communicate the decisive quality advantages of domestic dairy products both domestically and abroad. It must not be the case that products with different quality standards end up on the shelves as ‘equivalent products’ because of insufficient labelling. Therefore, improved labelling of the products is necessary,” says Petschar.
