AHDB's Deadweight sheep pricing series takes a step forward

Monday, 23 October 2023

We take great pride in providing independent, transparent and reliable market information to help you make informed business decisions. This spans our information on farmgate prices, production volumes, international trade flows and even how consumers buying habits are changing.

Making changes

To continue to do just this, we are delivering improvements to our deadweight voluntary pricing series for prime sheep (often referred to as the deadweight SQQ*), by introducing carcase coefficients to help standardise the variety of dressing specifications in our current price reporting sample.

This will enable us to standardise prices for both Kidney Knob and Channel Fat (KKCF) as well as diaphragm skirt. Our updated methodology will improve accuracy through consistently reporting a price for a lamb with both KKCF and diaphragm skirt removed.

For more details on the research work that underpins these coefficients, visit the webpage below:

Establishing coefficients for the weight of kidney knob and channel fat (KKCF) and diaphragm skirt in lamb carcases

Future outputs

The updated methodology will allow us to report a price based on KKCF and diaphragm skirt being removed from the carcase. Based on historical analysis of the price series (previous 12 months), this change will increase the p/kg price reported by approximately 1.1p - 3.5p, dependent on the make-up of our pricing sample in any given week. When viewing in percentage terms, this would be seen as an increase in the region of 0.2 - 0.5%, dependent on that week’s sample make-up. As such, we recommend additional caution when making historical comparisons following this methodology change.

We intend to begin reporting in this manner from 29 November 2023. We will continue to monitor the pricing series closely to ensure we deliver as accurate a pricing series as possible, on behalf of our levy payers.

For any queries regarding the change, do not hesitate to get in touch with myself or a member of the team through redmeat.mi@ahdb.org.uk.

*The Standard Quality Quotation is a GB industry standard weight band for the carcase of dressed prime sheep weighing between 12 kg and 21.5 kg

Image of staff member Tom Dracup

Tom Dracup

Lead Analyst (Red Meat)

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