Indonesia starts delivering chicken to Singapore

JAKARTA - Indonesia on Wednesday (July 13) started delivering frozen chicken to Singapore, a move that will allow the Republic to diversify its chicken sources after its major supplier Malaysia banned exports early last month.

As much as 50,000kg of frozen chicken from integrated poultry company Charoen Pokphand Indonesia (CPI) is set to depart from Tanjung Priok port in North Jakarta on Wednesday evening. They are estimated to arrive in Singapore on Friday and be handled by Crown Pacific Beverage, the CPI's trading partner.

The shipment came after the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved Indonesia as Singapore's new source of frozen, chilled and processed chicken meat to the Republic on June 30. Chicken from three establishments run by CPI and Ciomas Adisatwa, a subsidiary of publicly-listed Japfa Comfeed Indonesia, can be imported.

The company expects to deliver 1,000 tonnes of frozen chicken to Singapore in total throughout this year, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

CPI works mostly on manufacturing animal feeds, including poultry feeds, but its business activities also include broiler breeding, wholesale trading of livestocks, and wholesale trading of poultry and processed chicken.

Indonesia has never sold chicken to Singapore, and has so far exported salted eggs totalling around 50,000 month to its counterpart.

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In the past few years, South-east Asia's biggest economy has faced an oversupply of chicken, and the situation deteriorated during Covid-19 pandemic, with surpluses even rising.

This year, it will produce 3.88 million tonnes of chicken meat, more than its domestic demand, and the government hopes that part of the surplus can be sold overseas.

Another company getting the SFA's nod, Ciomas Adisatwa, earlier told The Straits Times that the company will begin shipping frozen chickens to Singapore on July 24 and aims to deliver 100 tonnes of frozen chicken within the first month of its deliveries.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.