With more people shopping online for groceries during the Covid-19 pandemic, both in Britain and abroad, promotional efforts for Wales’s iconic farming exports have been ensuring that PGI Welsh lamb and PGI Welsh beef aren’t left behind.

Online grocery sales have surged across the world over the last 12 months, it is also reported that shoppers in the United Arab Emirates spent more whilst doing online grocery shopping compared to when they visited stores.

In Europe, key Welsh lamb markets such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland have also seen a large rise in e-commerce, with grocery shopping benefitting from an increase. It is estimated that approximately 28 per cent of European consumers who live in urban areas used online shopping as their main channel for buying groceries during lockdown.

Hybu Cig Cymru – Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) and Welsh processing companies have redoubled efforts to ensure that growing online retailers stock Welsh lamb and Welsh beef. As a result, the customers of several new tech-savvy retailers have been enjoying the best of Welsh meat through online ordering services.

Denmark’s largest online retailer has recently started stocking selected Welsh lamb cuts and joins a host of other online retailers. In the last year, two online grocery retailers in the United Arab Emirates are now also stocking and selling Welsh lamb, as well as a specialist online food company in Singapore and a leading Japanese online retailer. A German meat specialist website regularly sells out of its Welsh lamb products.

Deanna Jones, HCC’s export market development executive, commented: "Coronavirus restrictions across the globe have altered consumer buying patterns significantly. Here in the UK and further afield, we are seeing that people are doing more online grocery shopping and this trend is likely to continue to grow over the coming months.

"We’re really pleased to be welcoming new online retailers as stockists of Welsh lamb in a year which has seen more people turn to online grocery shopping. We now have a range of general supermarket retailers and more specialist, meat retailers selling Welsh lamb online in key export markets, which is great news for our industry."