LMC: Tight Cattle Supplies in First Half of 2012
NORTHERN IRELAND, UK - An ongoing feature of the cattle trade in NI for the last 15 months has been very tight cattle supplies, with numbers down sharply relative to earlier levels. The slaughter
statistics for June 2012 provide
further confirmation that cattle
supplies remain under significant
pressure in NI with processors
struggling to maintain throughput.
Several plants have been operating
shorter working weeks in 2012 and in
late June 2012 only a couple of plants
killed cattle on a five-day week basis
with some factories killing on only a
two or three days per week. This has
been driven by the tightness in cattle
supplies with numbers particularly
tight during June.
Table 1 clearly shows that the prime
cattle kill was under significant
pressure in June, with overall numbers
down by 10 per cent year-on-year. This
was driven to a large extent by a
decline in the heifer and young bull kill
while the steer kill has held up slightly
better.
The heifer kill was down by 15 per cent
this June compared to June 2011. This
is a continuation of the trend for the
year to date with the heifer kill down by
14 per cent between January and June
year-on-year. This has largely been
driven by an increase in the proportion
of heifers retained for breeding with
the obvious consequence being a
decline in the number of heifers being
finished for beef. The decline in the
young bull kill evident in the figures for
June 2012 is a continuation of the
trend for reduced slaughterings
compared to last year. Producers
appear to have switched away from
intensive bull beef production in NI,
favouring steer production. The result
has been a steeper decline in the bull
kill (-15 per cent) compared to the
steer kill, which has seen a reduction
of 5 per cent
The decline in the June kill was not
confined to prime cattle. The cow kill
which had been reasonably stable
earlier in the year has started to slip
with slaughter numbers down by 14
per cent in June. The kill for the yearto-date is three per cent lower
compared to the same period last
year.
The tightness in supplies has been a
keen driver of the strong prices in the
cattle trade in the last few months and
contrasts with the sheep trade where
the NI kill has been buoyant and prices
have been under pressure year-onyear.
In the first six months of the year, the
NI sheep kill was up by 29 per cent
when compared to the same period in
2011. This is a significant increase
with an additional 33,000 lambs
having been slaughtered to the end of
June in NI. In June however, this
increase in the kill appears to have
accelerated with numbers up by 39
per cent year-on-year. This increase
reflects reduced exports of NI lambs to
ROI for direct slaughter, along with
increased availability generally.
With factories under pressure due to
reduced cattle throughput, the
increased lamb kill may come as a
welcome reprieve for those factories
processing sheep given that it may
help offset some of those higher unit
costs associated with reduced
throughput on the cattle side.
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