Weekly cattle & sheep market wrap – 01 August 2024

Key points

Prices for week ending 27 July 2024

• GB deadweight prime cattle prices saw growth as supplies dipped compared to the previous week. The overall steer and young bull prices rose by 3p to 483.9p/kg and 475.7p/kg respectively.
• The GB SQQ lamb price saw further rises, up 2p from the previous week, in a time of lower supplies as other on-farm jobs took priority for producers in the week.

Cattle

The GB deadweight all-prime average cattle price saw a boost of 2.4p from the previous week to land at 482p/kg. Looking into the categories, both overall steers and overall young bull prices grew by 3p from the previous week to 483.9p/kg and 475.7p/kg respectively. The overall heifer price saw a smaller gain of 1.2p on the week to end at 481.5p/kg. At a regional level, Southern and Central steer prices saw the largest increase, with Scottish and Northern prices still seeing growth but at a lower rate. Market commentary notes that demand for steaks and related cuts have been boosted with barbeque demand.

Prime estimated kill fell by 200 head on the week to 33,300 head, with both steers and heifers seeing slight throughput growth compared to the previous week. Young bull throughputs fell on the week.

The overall average cow price dropped by 2.8p from the previous week to end at 360.3p/kg. Estimated cow kill rose by 400 head to reach 9,000 head, up 11% year on year, with the highest weekly volume slaughtered since the tail end of April. This could be partly due to the growth in demand for grilling items through a period of better weather, alongside seasonal production trends.

Sheep

The GB deadweight new season lamb price saw another week-on-week increase, following some large decreases in recent weeks. The price sat at 649p/kg, growth of 1.8p from the previous week, to sit 68p higher than the same week in 2023.

GB estimated lamb kill dropped by 7,250 head from the previous week to 173,000 head. This downturn in supplies followed some elevated weeks of kill in June and early July, which has left the year-to-date total 9.6% lower than in 2023. Some commentary from industry suggests that there was a dip in throughputs in both the liveweight and deadweight channels due to the better weather conditions, which spurred on work on-farm instead of marketing lambs.

Reports also suggest that the quality of lambs is still struggling through all channels, potentially resulting in lower per head values. Moving into the coming weeks, the seasonal on-farm pressures alongside tight weather windows may place more pressure on supplies, as time becomes increasingly tight for producers.

Looking further afield, prices on the Rungis wholesale market have dipped slightly from the previous week, however, prices for UK lamb remain approximately €1 higher than the same period last year. That being said, recent exchange rate increases has impacted UK products competitiveness.

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