Warrendale Wagyu: Largest producer of wagyu beef targets improvements as 'niche' meat bucks trend
The UK’s largest producer of wagyu beef is redoubling its efforts to improve the meat’s quality and highlight the work of the 700 farmers it partners.
Tom Richardson, managing director of Warrendale Wagyu, at Cattle Hill, near Pocklington, said demand for British wagyu was as strong as it had ever been and revealed his organisation’s strategies as British beef consumption suffers the fall-out of price inflation.
Levy board AHDB has forecast total beef volume sales across retail and food service this year to be a six per cent decline compared to 2024.
However, Mr Richardson emphasised the wagu sector was bucking the beef trend as consumers were seeking nutritionally dense high-quality beef and “British wagyu fits into that spot”.
He said although it was easier for shop customers to see the origin of their beef, unless restaurants actively promoted provenance diners were “one step removed”.
Mr Richardson said: "Wagyu is still relatively small in the scheme of the beef industry, less than two per cent of total UK beef production numbers. It is still a niche but it has grown 18-fold in the last six years. We are processing more cattle than we have ever processed. It’s positive for all the 700 UK farmers we work with, from dairy farmers who produce our wagyu calves through to calf rearers and finishers.”
Nevertheless, Warrendale, which works with farmers to cross full blood Wagyu genetics to produce a Wagyu Cross, known as an F1 Wagyu, staged a conference last month to underline challenges and opportunities facing the wagyu sector.
He said: “There is a lot of challenge at the moment with inflation and reducing customer discretionary spend and cost of living challenges. Farmers want to know what is happening with the sale of their product.” He added Warrendale Wagyu and its supply chain had been structured with fixed long term pricing, to avoid the ebbs and flows of the standard beef market, which over the last weeks and months has seen quite a sharp decrease in price.
Mr Richardson said the beef industry price inflation had probably been “long overdue”. "It went to a level that has damaged consumption and now it has crashed very quickly”, he said. “The danger is some farmers who bought cattle at the wrong time will struggle to make money, at best.
"Farmers who work with us know what they buy at and what they will sell at. That’s really proving… we’re getting a lot of loyalty from our farmers because they’re seeing the benefits, particularly now as the British beef market has taken a downturn.”
He said the industry had been impacted by free trade deals done by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss with countries such as Australia.
Mr Richardson said: "They’re coming from arguably a lot more intensive systems, more feedlot systems. You could argue it is unfair, but we’ve had a Government who’ve gone out and done free trade deals and that’s the market we are operating in now. But we’ve got to do a better job in telling our story and our provenance. We are doubling down on making sure our beef quality is even better in the future.”