Tom's Market Muster: A weekly whip around livestock market news

New Zealand lamb slaughter hits 12m head

With Australia and New Zealand making up between 80%-90% of the global lamb and mutton supply, how have our counterparts from across the ditch been going this year? From January to May, New Zealand and Australia were neck and neck with lamb slaughter, with both hitting 10 million head. However, since then the New Zealand numbers have slowed significantly, which is in line with historical trends, to see 12.8m slaughtered from January to August. Australia has gone on to hit 16m head slaughtered in that time.

US cattle trading 120% higher than in Australia

A weakening US cattle price hasn't drastically impacted the competitiveness of Australian beef in the US market. Comparing the EYCI and the US CME Feeder Cattle Index, the US index has had a 100% premium over Australian cattle for all of 2024. The month of September closed at a 120% difference between the two, this is down from 133% in August 2024.

Brazil hits record cattle slaughter for the June Quarter

Much has been discussed about the high US cattle slaughter. But Brazil, the third largest global beef producer, is also seeing a record slaughter rate. In Quarter 1 (January-March) Brazil cattle slaughter reached 9.30m, an increase of 24.6% compared to the same period of the previous year. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) released Quarter 2 (April-June) figures, showing that 9.96m head had been processed. This is an increase of 17.5% compared to the second quarter of 2023. Furthermore, this is an all time record since 1997, when tracking started for the country.

Australian sheep flock at liquidation levels since December 2022

Sheep slaughter figures from MLA show we are on track to hit a 10m head for sheep slaughtered this year. We're currently sitting at 7.8m for the calendar year. Sheep slaughter over 2m head a quarter equates to the national flock being in liquidation. Australia has been over 2m head slaughtered every quarter since December 2022.

Crossbred lambs flow online on AuctionsPlus

There have been 72,000 crossbred lambs offered on AuctionsPlus across the past three weeks (September 12-27). Volume is testing the market with a 77% clearance, but a stable market has seen prices average prices only move 9%, currently an average of 376c.

Data courtesy of New Zealand Beef & Lamb, MLA, CME Group, IBGE, and AuctionsPlus.

Tom Rookyard is the General Manager at Ottley Livestock Finance.