As Mexican Middle Class Grows, Beef Producer SuKarne Releases New Products to Meet Demand
(PRWEB) November 05, 2013 -- In May, when U.S. President Barack Obama visited Mexico he said: "Because of the sacrifices of generations, a majority of Mexicans now call themselves middle class, with a quality of life that your parents and grandparents could only dream of."
The words call up images of a Mexico where campesinos of the early twentieth century are replaced by upwardly mobile urbanites. As the middle class has grown and more women enter the workforce, demand for convenience has driven the growth of supermarkets. There, meat is prepackaged rather than butchered daily from nearly whole animals at the local mercados.
That’s where SuKarne comes in. The company has grown to become the fifth largest producer of grain-fed beef in North America and could not have done so if the demand wasn’t there.
"You couldn’t do what SuKarne is doing and couldn’t recognize the value of boxed beef if you didn’t have the transition from traditional markets to supermarkets," says Derrell Peel, livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University in MeatingPlace, an industry magazine. "Supermarkets have grown hand in hand with changes in shopping patterns."
Over the past decade, Mexico has transitioned from a system where shoppers purchased freshly butchered beef at the market to one based on boxed beef, Peel says in the article.
A SuKarne spokesman said that this year, the company launched portion control products. For example, family-size packages where each piece of meat is approximately the same weight.
"That’s a really big step," Peel says. "Until [recent years], the value of that beef was determined at a carcass level, but now by breaking it down into primals, there’s a whole new value potential."
Stephanie Keet, Social Innovation, http://www.landerscountry.com/, 501-993-8947, [email protected]
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