Romania and Greece Look to U.S. Soy for Vegetal Protein Ingredients, Superior Amino Acid Composition for Animal Feed

A new export batch of U.S. Soy arrives this week in Constanta Port, Romania and will immediately be discharged and distributed by Bunge to their customers, end users from Romania and Bulgaria. This shipment consists of 50,000 metric tons (MT) of U.S. soybean meal, while all the previous vessels delivered to Romania this year were beans used to be crushed at the local Bunge plant. Greece also imported another large vessel containing U.S. soybeans this week, increasing market share in this country as well. The growth of U.S. soy imports into Romania, Bulgaria and Greece is a consequence of both opportunities offered by this region’s growing feed industries and sustained marketing efforts combined with technical programs implemented by USSEC in the sub region over the past year.

“It has been an excellent window of opportunity for Romanian feed and livestock industries to get access and use soy originating from the U.S. The local industries fully benefited from U.S. Soy’s quality for the past seven months and this generated excellent feedback from customers, saying that the U.S. Soy proved to be the “golden standard” for them in terms of all vegetal protein ingredients used in animal feeding,” stated Dr. Iani Chihaia, USSEC consultant for East Europe and Greece sub region.

This is supported by the analysis performed by several European feed mills and commercial labs over the past six months to establish the amino acids profile of U.S. soy products sampled at the import destination. All of the numbers received from the lab analysis proved that U.S. Soy has a superior amino acid profile versus other origins of soybean meal. Additionally, animals fed with this ingredient performed better. This is in line with the findings of the USSEC’s studies conducted in Europe by a research group from Madrid University, strengthening customer confidence in the U.S. soy products they purchase. Moreover, the physical characteristics of U.S. soybean meal are clearly superior compared to meal of any other origin, which is taken in consideration more and more by Romanian nutritionists.

Europe is a key market for U.S. Soy and the growing feed and livestock industries in Eastern European countries and Greece’s aqua sector offer promising opportunities. USSEC will continue to pursue efforts in promoting U.S. Soy and supporting end users by offering technical assistance programs.