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Indonesia is contemplating building a new farm in Batam to supply fresh chicken to Singapore if demand remains healthy in the weeks to come, The Straits Times reported.

Suryo Pratomo, the Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore, was on July 21 morning at the Leong Hup Distribution in Fishery Port Road, which received the first batch of frozen chicken from Jakarta, Indonesia on July 17.

According to ST, he said: "If we can set up the farm in Batam, it will not take a long time to bring live chickens to Singapore."

He provided this update after he had spoken to poultry producers in Indonesia who are assessing the viability of setting up a farm in Batam and its possible size, by first gauging Singapore's demand for chicken.

Currently, the chicken exported from Indonesia to Singapore are frozen meat.

Frozen chicken bought up by chicken rice businesses here

ST reported that it understands that the first batch of frozen chicken has been bought up mainly by chicken rice stalls.

Suryo added that an estimated 1 million kg of frozen chicken will arrive in Singapore by the end of 2022

Prior to this chicken export, Indonesia had exported around 50,000 salted eggs to Singapore each month.

It was also reported that frozen chicken from Indonesia weighs about 2kg to 2.3kg, while those from United States, Thailand, Brazil and Argentina weigh about 1.5kg to 1.6kg.

In terms of transportation, it takes just four days for chicken to arrive from Indonesia, compared to 30 to 60 days for United States, Brazil and Argentina.

Background

Singapore imported 214,400 tonnes of chicken meat in 2021.

About one-third of it were from Malaysia.

Malaysia has put in place an export ban of up to 3.6 million chickens a month since June 1, following supply and pricing issues domestically.

In response to the ban, Singapore announced it will source chickens from other places, including Indonesia and Thailand.

Within a month, on June 30, Singapore confirmed that Indonesia has become a new source for the import of chilled, frozen and processed chicken.

The next phase would be to export live chickens from Indonesia to Singapore.

In Malaysia, local poultry industry players are lamenting that they might lose the Singapore market for good.

Top photo via Unsplash