Sheep and Lamb Quarterly Power Rankings: SW Victoria leads the field

AuctionsPlus sheep and lamb listings for the first quarter of 2023 (1^st January – 31^st March) reached a total of 1,136,458 head – down 3% from the previous quarter and 10% lower than last year. January saw a surge of numbers as a backlog of lambs hit the market following delays caused by extreme rainfall, flooding and muddy conditions on-farm in 2022. February and March throughput was on par with the same period in 2021 but lower than early 2022.

Key Points

• SW Victoria takes out top AuctionsPlus listing region with 219,596 head in Q1 2023.

• Monaro and Southern Tablelands experienced a significant rise in listings.

• The Central West takes out the top purchasing region while NW Victoria saw a big lift.

Lamb listings accounted for 51% of the offering across the quarter, while not station mated ewes made up 26% and joined ewes contributed 20%. Lamb prices declined over the first quarter of 2023, with the National Trade Lamb Indicator (NTLI) falling from 804c to 733c/kg cwt by the end of March. Mutton prices also fell from 455c to 348c by the end of March before rebounding recently to about 400c/kg cwt. Clearance rates continued to decline in line with overall market sentiment, averaging 56% in Q1 compared to 61% in Q4 2022 and 69% in Q1 2022.

Clearance rates averaged 72% over the last five years, while they have fallen to 56% in Q1 2023 due to higher supply reducing competition for stock in an already subdued restocking market. Throughput of sheep and lambs follows a very strong seasonality, with Q4 consistently the highest due to the Spring lamb flush. A clear signal of the abnormal conditions in 2022 is the bucking of this trend, with Q4 2022 throughput lower than Q1 2023 due to previously mentioned extreme weather conditions.

Figure 1: AuctionsPlus quarterly sheep and lamb clearance rates and throughput, 2018 – Q1 2023

SW Victoria has taken out the top spot for sheep and lamb listings regions in the first quarter of 2023. A total of 219,596 head were offered for the quarter, just 2% lower than last year and achieved the highest clearance rate of 66%. The NSW Central West was a respectable second place with 168,064 head – down 9%. While The NW Slopes & Plains came in at third with 88,536 head – 23% higher than last year.

The largest year-on-year rise was seen in the Monaro and Southern Tablelands where throughput increased 74% with 78,011 head. The increased supply eased competition in the market with clearance rate falling 8 percentage points from the previous quarter to 51%, compared to 66% in Q1 2022. 

Table 1: AuctionsPlus sheep and lamb top ten listing regions Q1 2023

On the purchasing side of the market, the Central West came out on top with 117,214 head. The Riverina came in a close second with 104,422 head while Eastern & Pastoral SA secured a podium finish with 65,497 head. The largest rise in purchases was experienced in NW Victoria with 44,333 head – up 52% on last year. 31,917 head of those purchases were lambs and 15,521 head were lambs from SW Victoria.

Table 2: AuctionsPlus sheep and lamb top ten purchasing regions Q1 2023

NSW dominated state-based listings in the first quarter of 2023 with 50% of national listings. This is up from 43% in the corresponding quarter last year. Victoria contributed 29% of listings while SA accounted for 12% and Queensland made up 7%. Victoria was steady year-on-year while SA and Queensland were lower.

Figure 2: AuctionsPlus sheep and lamb state-based listings Q1 2023