Market Talk - Processors bid to keep up flow

Lamb and mutton processors are desperately trying to keep their kill floors going at a reasonable level.

We are starting to see a few new seasons lambs drift into the early saleyards in NSW and the first came in to Bendigo on Monday but it will be at least a month before we see any decent numbers.

Most trade new lambs are being quoted at $285 to $306 and at Bendigo this week a line of 26 kg lambs made $340 and the second run at 24 kg sold for $323 working out either side of 1300c/kg carcass weight with most skins around $4.

There have been some decent lines of store new lambs coming to the market on the screen with some producers deciding to take the good early money for light weight lambs.

Old season lambs are still tending to improve each week with many averages between 1,200c and 1,250c/kg in interstate saleyards as processors struggle for numbers.

It will be interesting to see if there are enough lambs coming to the market over the next couple of months to cause a price correction and if you take notice of the “experts” it will be at least October before that comes about and some say longer.

The news of the last couple of weeks has been the extreme mutton prices with some sheep in Victorian markets this week quoted as high as 900c with the national mutton indicator just over 800c/kg carcass weight.

We have never seen mutton prices at this level and this is on the back of smaller numbers, as the autumn and winter sheep cull in Western Victoria and most of South Australia shows it’s affects.

At Bendigo on Monday heavy ewes made $260 to $362 and good trade sheep $160 to $250/head.

At Powranna on Tuesday there were 1,855 mutton penned and it was noticeable that there were way more light sheep included than we have seen in recent months.

This aside all sheep sold well with heavy making $170 to $250, medium $120 to $220 and light $88 to $114. Restockers bought very light sheep for $18 to $34 to go back to the paddock.

Australia’s live cattle exports lifted to 779,541 head last financial year which is the highest year since 2021.

Indonesia is our biggest client taking 561,734 head (72 per cent of the total) while most other destinations like Vietnam and China were lower.

Although this trade has little effect on the Tasmanian beef industry it is significant in the whole export trade of Australia beef both live and in carcass form.