Cranswick is poised to open up the Australian market for British pork exports with a trailblazing deal worth £7m.

The company is set to start exporting boneless leg cuts of pork to one of Australia’s largest ham, bacon and salami manufacturers at the end of this month, pending final confirmation of its export licence.

It comes after Bpex and the Australian authorities enabled the first UK pigmeat exports by agreeing on health certificates earlier this year.

“We like to be at the forefront of these things, and we’ve been pushing for it for quite some time,” Cranswick CEO Adam Couch told The Grocer. The deal would be worth about £7m in annual sales to Cranswick, allowing for currency and supply fluctuations, he added.

The Australian export deal was especially attractive as Cranswick would be supplying Primo with high-value cuts of pork instead of the lower-value, fifth-quarter products more typically sold into export markets, Couch said. Defra environment secretary Owen Paterson was this week on a trade mission in Australia, and British pork producers hope pigmeat exports to Australia will ultimately be worth £20m a year.

Last year, then agriculture minister Jim Paice brokered an export deal with China worth £50m to export low-value cuts such as offal and trotters.

In a trading update last week, Cranswick said its sales had soared in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, rising 15% in the first three months of 2013. Full-year sales to the end of March were up 7% year-on-year.

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