‘Negative waves’ batter sheep trade as spring lamb quotes sink further
Sunday being Father’s Day I eventually got the television to myself when you’ve three teenagers in the house during lockdown, that’s an achievement.
I settled down to watch Kelly’s Heroes and for the best part of two hours enjoyed the company of Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland as they went about the job of robbing a bank in Nazi-occupied France of $12m in gold.
Yesterday, as I compiled this report, a line from Sutherland’s character, a tank commander called ‘Oddball’, kept coming into my mind: “Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with those negative waves.”
Oddball’s issue is with the driver of the tank who gets overly anxious when things start to go wrong, which they do on several occasions.
Right now the factory sheep trade, like Moriarty, is immersed in a wave of negativity: over the weekend both Kildare Chilling and the two ICMs dropped their quotes for lamb.
Kildare cut springs by 30c/ kg to €5.30/kg+10c/kg quality assurance, while the ICMs drop 10c/kg to also sit on €5.30+10c/kg QA.
Adding to these “negative waves” was the decision of both Dawn Ballyhaunis and Kepak Athleague not to quote.
ICSA sheep chairman Sean McNamara said that as prices continue to fall he is meeting increasing numbers of farmers who are telling him they are going to “get out” of
Kildare Chilling
Tue sheep altogether.
Sean sees a danger that with market conditions deteriorating, some older men will make good on their threat to get out by slaughtering their ewes.
“Men are sick of the uncertainty; many are at retiring age and have had enough and they have no one coming on,” Sean said.
Returning to prices, Kildare continue to quote €4.90+10c/ kg QA for hogget, while the ICMs are back with an offering of €4.50+10c/kg QA, having declined to quote for hogget last week.
On the cull ewe side, Kildare 260+10QA 450+10QA 450+10QA 490+10QA 530+10QA 530+10QA 530+10QA and the ICMs are unchanged at €2.60+10c/kg QA and €2.50/kg, respectively.
Kantar, the data and insight company, reports that lamb sales in the UK were less positive than expected over Easter and Ramadan both festivals fell within the early stages of the lockdown.
The decrease in spend is estimated at 7pc. Sales of roasting joints were not as high as previous years, resulting in a drop in total spend on lamb over the period of 15.1pc.
Cooking
However, with more consumers cooking at home, the volume of lamb chops sold grew by 23.4pc.
On the mart scene the fall of €8-10/hd of two weeks ago for factory types was followed last week by an overall steadying in their trade, although prices did ease back by around €2-3/hd in some places.
In general, however, factory and butcher types were steady.
Against that the trade for store lambs moved well as bigger numbers combined with improved grass prospects after the rain brought out more farmer buyers.