The 2025 Bord Bia Meat Marketing Seminar kicks off this morning (Friday, January 17) at the Killashee Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare.

The annual event is sees meat-industry stakeholders from across Ireland gather to hear Bord Bia, along with a host of expert speakers analyse the previous year and outline some of the key challenges and opportunities for the Irish meat industry for the coming year.

The conference opening will hear from the outgoing Minister of State, Martin Heydon, as well as the Bord Bia CEO, Jim O'Toole.

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's (DAFM's) Maria Dunne will also deliver a market access update in the opening addresses.

The first session will be hosted by the Bord Bia meat and livestock sector manager, Joe Burke and is titled: 'Global Market and sectors overview'.

Speaking in this session, will be GIRA’s Rupert Claxton, who will deliver a presentation on the global meat outlook.

After this, Mark Zieg, Seamus McMenamin, Joe Burke and Shauna Jager from Bord Bia’s meat and livestock team will deliver presentations on the the different meat sectoral outlooks.

Bord Bia's UK manager Donal Denvir will detail the latest information on the UK market status and Bord Bia's China manager Conor O'Sullivan will detail a market outlook for China and Asia overall looking to 2025 via a remote video link.

Session two is titled: 'EU Challenges and Markets' and will be hosted by Bord Bia's Noreen Lanigan.

Bord Bia's senior manager for agricultural sustainability Mick Houlihan will deliver a presentation on policy and regulation implications and former EU Commission lead trade negotiator John Clarke will discuss EU trade relationships and outlooks followed by a panel discussion.

The final session is titled: 'Meat Consumer Experience Dynamics' and will be hosted by Bord Bia trends and insight specialist.

In this session, Gavin Rothwell from Food Future Insights will deliver a presentation titled: 'Retail dynamics and the shopper' and this will be followed by a panel discussion and a questions and answers session.

Finally, the director of meat food and beverages at Bord Bia, John Murray will draw the meat marketing seminar to a close.