The Meat Board of Namibia has reallocated the remaining unused Norway quota to Meatco.

In its official communication to Meatco, the Meat Board said, “In accordance with the authorization of the Meat Board, Meatco is granted an additional Norway export quota of 400 tonnes”.

Meatco welcomes this reallocation of as we are best positioned to extract the maximum benefit for Namibia and our livestock producers. By the end of June 2016, we already used 56% of our annual quota of 1200 metric tonnes allocated to us. The additional quota will go a long way in supporting producer prices in this drought year.

We are indebted to the Ministry of Industrialization, Trade and SME Development as well as the Meat Board of Namibia for granting Meatco and our producers this much-needed quota. The allocation has come at just the right time for us to produce and ship the product before 24 October so that the 2016 quota is used before the end of December. Meatco would like to reassure government, the Meat Board and all our stakeholders that we will fully utilise the quota allocated to Namibia in 2016.

Meatco is aware of the potential implication if Namibia is not able to fully utilize the quota, as it places government in a difficult position to request a quota expansion in future if we cannot fill the current allocation of 1600 tonnes.