Biltong Manufacturers in the US: Who Actually Makes It

Published August 29, 2026 Updated September 15, 2026

Biltong manufacturers in the US are a small group of USDA-inspected facilities that dry beef, supplying a much larger group of brands that sell it. Importing biltong is prohibited, so every bag on an American shelf was produced here, and several brands sitting side by side in the same aisle may well have come out of the same drying room.

That isn't a scandal, and it isn't hidden. It's how most food categories work before they get large, and biltong in America is still a young category. If you're sourcing biltong, launching a brand, or just curious who dried the bag in your hand, the structure's worth understanding.

Biltong manufacturers in the US - beef hanging in a commercial drying room

Every US biltong is produced in the US

You can't legally import biltong from South Africa for commercial sale, and travelers can't bring it in either. The restriction is animal-health based rather than food-safety based: US import rules block beef products from countries with foot-and-mouth disease risk, and South Africa falls inside that restriction.

So the entire American biltong market had to be built domestically — beef sourced here, dried in facilities inspected here. Anyone claiming to sell imported South African biltong is either mistaken or describing a recipe rather than an origin. The full explanation is in why biltong is illegal to import.

How biltong manufacturers in the US are structured

The category splits into two groups that are easy to confuse.

Producers. USDA-inspected facilities with the equipment, the drying space and the approved process to turn raw beef into shelf-stable dried beef. There aren't many of them, because the barrier to entry is a regulated establishment rather than a kitchen.
Brands. Companies that own a recipe, a label, a website and a customer relationship, and contract a producer to dry to their specification. There are a great many of these, and the number grows every year.

So the honest answer to "who makes this brand's biltong" is often a facility whose name isn't on the bag. Two brands with different logos, different spice profiles and different price points can share a drying room and a USDA establishment number.

What differs between them is the specification: the cut, the marinade, the spice, the target moisture, the sourcing standard and how tightly any of it gets enforced.

What a USDA-inspected dried beef facility needs

Drying beef commercially is a regulated process, not a scaled-up home project. A facility producing shelf-stable dried beef for retail generally needs:

A grant of inspection and an establishment number — the EST number printed inside the USDA mark of inspection on the package.
A validated process that meets the FSIS lethality standard for dried beef, with documented scientific support that the process achieves the required pathogen reduction.
A HACCP plan identifying hazards, critical control points and the limits at each one, with records proving they were met on every batch.
Sanitation programs and verification testing, plus water-activity or moisture-protein-ratio control to demonstrate shelf stability.
Label approval for the claims and the nutrition panel that go on the bag.

None of that's cheap to build, and all of it has to hold up under inspection continuously rather than once. That's the real reason producers are scarce and brands are plentiful.

What co-packing actually means

Co-packing is a contract arrangement: the brand specifies the product, the producer manufactures it inside their inspected facility, and the finished goods come back under the brand's label. Depending on the deal, the producer may also source the beef, buy the packaging, run quality testing and hold inventory.

The trade's straightforward. The brand skips the capital cost of a plant and the regulatory burden of running one, and in exchange gives up direct control of the drying floor, sits in a production queue alongside other clients, and depends on somebody else's capacity.

That's a reasonable trade for a young brand. It's also a real constraint, and any brand that pretends otherwise is describing a factory it doesn't own.

Minimum order quantities: the wall most new brands hit

The thing that stops most people isn't the recipe. It's the minimum order quantity.

A producer's economics run on production slots. Every run costs the same changeover, cleaning, setup and paperwork whether it yields two hundred pounds or two thousand, so producers set a floor beneath which a run loses money. That floor is the MOQ, and for a new brand it means committing cash to a quantity of finished product long before anyone's proven they can sell it.

The knock-on effects shape the whole category: brands launch with fewer flavors than they'd like, reorder in large infrequent lumps rather than small frequent ones, and hold inventory that ages while it waits. When you see a young biltong brand carrying two products rather than seven, an MOQ is usually the reason.

It's also the single most common reason a promising brand quietly never launches at all.

Why we say ours is co-packed

Billi Tong's is a co-packed brand by design, and we're living inside the exact process this article describes: choosing a USDA-inspected producer. We own the brand, the recipe, the site, the marketing and the direct sales here in Austin. We don't own a drying room, and I'm not going to write sentences engineered to imply we do.

We're also being deliberate about who we sign with. We're building the brand on beef from Texas ranches that raise cattle the regenerative way, and the ranch partner search is on — a supply chain we'd be happy to publish in full rather than describe in adjectives. When it's signed, the name goes in this paragraph. If you run a ranch or an inspected facility, the ranch partners page is the front door and the address is cal@btbiltong.com.

Saying so out loud is the point. The alternative in this category is a lot of language engineered to imply a facility that doesn't exist, and a customer who eventually works it out trusts the rest of the bag less. Ours is brought to Austin, Texas by a South African founder, air-dried for days, and the cure is beef, vinegar, salt, coriander, fennel and black pepper. Where it gets dried isn't the part we needed to be vague about.

What to ask before you source biltong

If you're evaluating a supplier — as a retailer, a food-service buyer or a brand looking for a producer — these questions separate answers from atmosphere:

What's the establishment number on the label, and can I see the inspection status?
Is the process validated for shelf stability, and against which standard?
What cut is used, and is the product whole muscle or ground-and-formed?
What's the MOQ, the lead time, and the queue position for a reorder?
Who owns the recipe and the spice specification — the brand or the producer?
What's the beef sourcing standard, and is it written into the contract or just described?

And if you're not sourcing but simply want to buy from a producer who makes it themselves: our first choice is Lowfeld Soul Food in Awendaw, South Carolina — a South African-run operation that makes biltong, droëwors and boerewors to order, with no preservatives, and ships within five days of drying.

Comparing what's on the shelf is a useful companion exercise — the biltong brands roundup covers who sells what, and how biltong is made covers the process a facility is actually running.

FAQ

Who manufactures biltong in the US?

A relatively small number of USDA-inspected dried-meat facilities produce the biltong sold in America, supplying a much larger set of consumer brands. Most brands do not own a plant. They contract a producer to dry beef to their specification, so several labels can originate from one facility.

Is biltong made in America or imported?

All biltong sold legally in the US is produced in the US. Importing beef products from South Africa is prohibited on animal-health grounds relating to foot-and-mouth disease risk, and that applies to commercial shipments and to travelers carrying it in personal baggage.

What is a biltong co-packer?

A co-packer is a USDA-inspected facility that manufactures a product to a brand's specification and packs it under that brand's label. The brand owns the recipe, packaging and customer relationship; the co-packer owns the plant, the validated process and the regulatory grant of inspection.

What does a USDA-inspected biltong facility require?

It requires a grant of inspection and establishment number, a validated process meeting the FSIS lethality standard for dried beef, a HACCP plan with supporting records, sanitation and verification testing, moisture or water-activity control demonstrating shelf stability, and approved labeling for every claim on the package.

How do I start a biltong brand?

Start by finding a USDA-inspected producer that already dries beef, then work backwards from their minimum order quantity. The MOQ, not the recipe, decides whether the launch is viable, because it sets how much finished inventory you must fund before you have sold anything.

If you'd rather taste the output than source it: the store isn't open yet, and the only thing buyable is the $100 Founding 50 first-batch box, fifty numbered spots with a full refund if it never launches. Stockist questions start on the wholesale biltong page or at cal@btbiltong.com.

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