1. Why was the Australian Pork industry able to become a major provider of pork to Singapore in spite of having been banned?
(An alternative to this question is: give the wise marketing decisions that were made to enable Australian Pork to become a major supplier to Singapore)
In 1997 the Singapore authorities banned imported Australian chilled pork, as it did not meet Singapore’s health requirements.
However, a collaboration between Singapore government (Agrifood and Veterinary Authority, or AVA) and Australia’s Pig Research and Development Corporation on a pilot program to meet the standard and requirement of Singapore authorities proved to be a success and the platform for Australian pork export market to Singapore.
By early 1999, Australia was supplying about 1.4 tonnes of chilled pork per month. This figure would dramatically rise up to 2,000 tonnes per month by end of 1999, due to an unfortunate incident in Malaysia.
Singaporeans generally strongly prefer fresh pork to frozen. Malaysia was the main supply of live pigs to Singapore amounting to 3,000 pigs per day. In late 1998, the “Nipah” virus struck Malaysian pig farming industry that forced nearly half of Malaysia’s 2.4 pigs to be destroyed. The Singapore government immediately ceased and banned pigs’ import from Malaysia.
Australia became the obvious choice of importing pork to supply the high demand of pork consumption of Singapore. Confederation of Australian Pork Exporters (CAPE) realizes the need to capitalize the situation and Singapore’s high demand of pork and Australian Pork Limited (APL) invested S$4.26 million to study the Singaporean market, and develop and implement a strategy to ensure that it remained a major pork supplier to Singapore in the long run.
Several tests were done and implementations of stringent procedures were executed in order to comply with AVA and other related Singapore authorities. This was crucial more so surrounding the outbreak of