Beef for Turkey via Zlatibor – Export of 5,000 tons of meat to start in late January 2018

The sale of beef from Serbia to Turkey, contracted in October 2017 by a free trade agreement between the two states, will start this month, with Zlatibor as the dispatch point, Blic reports.

Turkey has given Serbia a quota of 5,000 tons of beef to be exported a year, which is to be realized through the Zlatibor Cajetina meat-packing plant, selected by the Turkish side as the most suitable one for the realization of this arrangement and the one which has met all their standards.

– If everything goes according to plan, the export will start in late January. The capacities of livestock breeders in Zlatibor are too small to meet the quota, and livestock is therefore to be bought out from all over Serbia. A total of 100 young cattle a day can be bought out in the country, which will be enough to meet the provisions of the agreement – Goran Vilic, owner of Zlatibor Cajetina, told Blic.

According to him, cattle will be purchased at the market price, and a kilogram of Simmental cattle currently costs RSD 240.

The new free trade agreement with Turkey was arranged in late September 2017, during the visit of Serbian Minister of Trade Rasim Ljajic to the country, where he met with Turkish Minister of Economy Nihat Zeybekci. The two ministers signed the new agreement during the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Serbia in October 2017.

The agreement envisages duty-free export of 5,000 tons of beef a year from Serbia to Turkey.

The Turkish delegation visited the Cajetina meat-packing plant on December 15 and gave approval for the meat export agreement to be realized through IM Zlatibor.

A day later, the founding meeting of the Zlatiborska Vrela Cooperative was held. Its initiators see the arrangement with Turkey as a chance to revive livestock breeding in Zlatibor.

– We want to have trustees in each village who will explain to producers that selling livestock to the Cajetina meat-packing plant is a great business opportunity. We will guarantee the buyout, and the funds we will receive from the state and the municipality, perhaps from EU funds as well, will enable us to form a service for livestock registration and give initial support to producers by providing animal feed – says Dragan Knezevic, a veterinarian from Cajetina, the president of the Cooperative.

Ministarstvo turizma i omladine Republike Srbije

Industrija mesa a.d. Zlatibor

Ministry of Trade of Serbia

Ministry of Economy of Turkey

Zlatibor Cajetina meat packing plant

Industrija Mesa Zlatibor

IM Zlatibor

Zlatiborska Vrela Cooperative

Free Trade Agreement with Turkey

export to Turkey

export of beef to Turkey

beef

buyout of cattle

buyout of beef

Zlatibor

Goran Vilic

Rasim Ljajic

Nihat Zeybekci

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Dragan Knezevic

Simmental cattle

quotas for export to Turkey

livestock breeding in Zlatibor