Irish beef dominates World Steak Challenge: companies win 68 medals, including 24 gold awards
Although Irish companies missed out on gold medals in the Wagyu beef category, they won many of the top awards in the other three categories, for fillet, ribeye, and sirloin.
Irish entries came away with 24 of the 124 gold medal awards in the World Steak Challenge 2025 judging in Amsterdam.
Launched in 2015, the Challenge gives producers and processors across the world an opportunity to benchmark their product quality, breed credentials, and processing standards.
At Amsterdam, 304 gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded, with the greatest medal haul of 68 going to Irish companies.
The overall winners will be announced on Monday, November 10, 2025, at the Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in London.
The Challenge is organised by the William Reed global food and drink media company, in partnership with Ireland’s Bord Bia, the Synergy Grill leading commercial cooking technology company, and Vlees & Co, a Dutch steakhouse company.
Although Irish companies missed out on gold medals in the Wagyu beef category, they won many of the top awards in the other three categories, for fillet, ribeye, and sirloin.
Gold Medals for fillet went to Lidl Ireland/Liffey Meats, Ashbourne Meats, Dawn Meats, and Dawn Meats/Aldi. All four were for grass fed beef.
Their stiffest competition in the final may come from Argentina and Poland, both of which had five gold medal winners for fillet each.
Australia and Finland had four gold medal winners for fillet each.
Irish companies scooped 12 gold medals for their ribeye steaks, all for grass fed beef.
Dawn Meats did best, with two gold medals on their own, two for Dawn Meats/Lidl, and one for Dawn Meats/Aldi.
However, ABP Foodgroup was nearly equally successful, with two golds for ABP Foodgroup Ireland/Aldi Ireland, and one each for ABP/Tesco Ireland and for ABP/M+S.
There was one ribeye gold medal each for Kepak Group, Dunnes Stores/Tendermeats, and Liffey Meats.
Only Australian and English companies approached the level of the Irish success, with gold medals for five of their ribeye steaks from each nation.
There were four gold medals for ribeye steaks from Argentina, and three each for companies in Finland and Poland.
Ireland also came out on top in the gold medals for sirloin steaks, winning eight.
Unusually, one of the winners was an Irish grain fed steak, from Gerald and Mairead Mackle's Kingsbury Farms.
Two of the other Irish golds for sirloin steaks went to Dawn Meats, plus two to Lidl/Dawn Meats.
Three other golds went to ABP Foodgroup Ireland; ABP/Tesco, and ABP/Aldi.
There were five golds for sirloin from companies in England, three went to Australia, and two each to Argentina and Poland.
The wagyu steak gold medals were dominated by Australia, winning 14, and Japan with six.
