New data released in the past week from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA)/Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) offers insight into how lamb throughput is tracking and what we might still have to come. All staying equal with demand, the supply equations the data suggests will be what dictates market movements most as we head into 2026.
Looking backwards first, the ABS Livestock Products quarterly report for the July to September period shows lamb slaughter dropping 23% compared to the previous quarter, and 18% year-on-year. It was the lowest quarterly kill since March 2022, and the lowest September quarter figure since 2020. South Australia had its lowest lamb slaughter quarterly total since June 1996. This brings year-to-date lamb slaughter, according to ABS data, about 7% lower than the same period last year. MLA’s latest industry projections had this figure at about 6% by year-end. National sheep slaughter also fell, down 21% from the June quarter and 26% from the September 2024 quarter.
Turning to intentions now, sheepmeat producer sentiment has surged to its strongest point since the conception of the survey three years ago, and now 52% intend to increase their lamb flock in 2026. In last October’s survey, that figure was 40%. The October 2024 survey expected lamb flock size for 2025 was 27.23 million. The October 2025 survey estimate for 2025 is 27.92 million. The latest survey's expected lamb flock size for 2026 is 31 million head, an increase of 11% year-on-year.
Looking at actual and expected sales from the survey to give an overview of expected supply, the latest survey has 44% of the current lamb drop left to sell in the first half of 2026. This is down from 46% expected to be left to sell in the first half of 2025 in the previous October survey. However, the figure ended up being higher than that for the January to June 2025 period. The February survey update showed 43% of producers had more still to sell than expected in October, pushing the estimate for the first half of 2025 from 10.27 million head (in the October 2024 survey) to 11.81 million head (in the February 2025 survey), and the total for 2024–25 to 22.34 million. Comparatively, ABS data has first-half lamb slaughter at 13.6 million, and FY total at 26 million.
The total actual and expected lamb sales for 2025–26 from this October’s survey is 23.87 million. Producers report actual sales of 4.42 million lambs from July through to the survey being taken in October (19%), with a further 8.89 million to sell before the end of the year (37%). Producers in the survey expect to sell 10.55 million from January to June 2026 (44%), meaning less left in the system than the year just gone. ABS reported lamb slaughter for the September quarter at 5.2 million head. An interesting side note to these figures is that despite total lamb sales expected to be higher year-on-year, the lamb marking rate reportedly dropped from 81% in 2024 to 74% this year.
That’s a lot of lamb numbers to digest, and if this year’s Sheep Producer Intentions Survey (SPIS) update in February told us anything it is that intentions are just that, and plenty of short-term factors can quickly move them - namely the weather. However, what we can take away from the latest survey is that there will likely be fewer lambs, percentage-wise, left to sell in the new year than there were in the first half of this year. And with September slaughter and industry projections pointing to significantly fewer lambs in the system overall, supply could well continue to support current market rates well into 2026.