2023 Annual Report: Canada Beef

Canada Beef is pleased to provide Alberta Beef Producers with a F2022-2023 overview of domestic and international market development and promotion activities to increase demand for Canadian beef while ensuring the maximum value for producer dollars.

The Canadian Beef Information Gateway was relaunched on the new database driven architecture and a branded Gateway created for a national retailer launched in early F2023-24. A poster with takeaway cards was created for butcher shops and producers selling their own beef with linkages to Gateway content. Digital provincial pages were created for the Gateway in partnership with provincial beef producer associations to help communicate regional attributes of the supply chain and its contribution to local communities.

Exciting content and engaging posts fueled growth across Canada Beef’s digital marketing platforms this fiscal. The combined results from our social platforms (Impressions 29M+, Engagement 510K and Post Link Clicks 190K) demonstrated consumer interest in our content.

CanadaBeef.ca saw 650K+ users with 1.2M page views. On a 28-day average, this accounted for 68K active users. About 43 per cent of the website traffic came from online searches, with Google the top search engine. The top content pages viewed and searched were Roasting Know How and Recipes.

The French website had 341K+ users. On a 28-day average, this accounted for more than 38K users.

Canada Beef held its first-ever Burger It Forward goodwill campaign in February 2023. The branded consumer marketing initiative was a remarkable success with 29,260 burgers sold by 112 participating community restaurants in 28 days, resulting in over $53K in donations to local and national food bank efforts.

The campaign will return in February 2024 with a goal to supplement the protein portion of food bank offerings while supporting locally owned restaurants. Outreach and planning began in September; recruitment of restaurant partners is slated for October and November and conversations are ongoing with provincial producer group partners.

The Import Levy (collected on beef imports at the equivalent rate of $1 per head) provides funding for positive beef messaging across Canada. The generic consumer marketing beef demand campaign, Explore the World of Beef, focused on cultural diversity in recipes and engagement. Each campaign
element surpassed plan goals by 150 per cent –340 per cent. The contests garnered 24K+ entries in total (the most entries received for a Canada Beef contest) and 2M+ people were reached through advertising
and earned broadcast placements.

The health and nutrition team provided research and information to inform industry discussions on
two significant policy issues in Canada: Front-of-Pack labelling and a national school food policy and contributed to nutrition and health-related consultations undertaken by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Canada Beef submitted more than 100 comments and 19 references not previously identified by the FAO.

This and other contributions allowed the FAO to carefully consider the full body of evidence on the topic of animal source foods. Their April 2023 report concludes that ‘animal source foods contribute to healthy diets’ and could have significant positive policy implications globally.

The Canadian Beef Centre of Excellence (CBCE) reopened in January, but the facility wasn’t fully idled during its renovation. The CBCE produced or assisted in producing 681 videos and 440 still images for various media projects to support foodservice, retail, wholesale applications, and nearly a dozen in-person promotional, marketing, or educational presentations and events.

Canada Beef participated in 23 international tradeshows in nine different countries to meet and identify new potential customers. Over 6.8K potential customers visited Canada Beef booths which generated approximately 625 business leads.

About 1.7K international meat trade professionals received technical training and education about Canadian beef products. Marketing and promotion programs were executed with 24 retail and 13 foodservice clients in 10 countries. In partnership with Canadian Embassies and Consulates, a further 16 promotional events were conducted in eight countries. The Export Market Development Program provided cost-shared support to Canadian beef exporters and their clients for 14 separate incoming visitor missions from a variety of different markets including Japan, Vietnam, Europe, Mexico, and South
Korea. Additionally, one outgoing Export Market Investigation mission, 19 trade show Export Market Diversification activities, 19 Promotion and Marketing initiatives and two Competitive Advantage Benchmarking projects were approved and supported under the program this fiscal.

Succession planning was a priority focus at Canada Beef with President Micheal Young’s planned retirement on the horizon, following a five-year term as president. Eric Bienvenue was announced as Incoming President effective October 3, 2023.

Bienvenue is a strategic leader with nearly 30 years of experience in senior leadership roles in the Canadian pork and poultry industries. Bienvenue will complete a six-month transition period and mentorship under Young until his retirement in March 2024. Bienvenue will assume the role and
title of Canada Beef President upon Young’s retirement.

For detailed information, please read the Canada Beef Annual Report 2022-2023 and subscribe to Canada Beef Performs.

This message was originally posted in Alberta Beef Producers’ 2023 Annual Report. You can find the PDF of the report here.