Analysis: cattle trade kicks on in 2024

The last 12 months will go down as another very positive period for the mart trade. The Irish Farmers Journal Martbids database gives farmers a great insight into national price movements and is an invaluable tool in terms of analysing prices of different categories of cattle on a weekly basis.

At this time of year, it also allows us to mine the data even further to compare this year’s sales data with previous years.

In this week’s analysis, we have taken a look at all the different categories of stock that we compare on a weekly basis.

On page 43, we delve even deeper into the data to take a look at different breeds and how they performed in the bullock and heifer rings in 2024 compared with the previous four years.

Green arrows on all categories of stock are a good sign, with the trade for all animals improving in 2024.

While some of the increases haven’t quite hit the highs of 2023, there have been some very positive movements in prices for different categories of stock.

Weanlngs

Heavy weanling bulls over 450kg saw the largest increase, with the price of top-quality 450kg-plus weanling bulls up 32c/kg on the previous year or €160/head on a 500kg bull.

This brought the average price of the top third of 450kg-plus bulls to €1,785 for a 500kg bull.

Weanling bulls in the top-quality 300kg to 400kg weight category saw a price rise of 27c/kg or €95/head on a 350kg weanling.

Weanling heifers also recorded good increases, with the top-quality 300kg to 400kg weanling heifer up 22c/kg or €77/head in the last 12 months.

The average price of a top-quality weanling heifer in the 300kg to 400kg weight bracket came in at €3.63/kg in 2024 or €1,270/head.

Beef cattle

Taking a look at the bullock and heifer rings, it’s interesting to see that some of the biggest gains here came in the bottom third of cattle in terms of quality.

This bottom third this would have a lot of Aberdeen Angus- and Hereford-cross cattle from the dairy herd and indeed Friesian bullocks in the bullock rings.

The biggest gain of 21c/kg came in the lower-quality 400kg to 500kg bullock category, followed by a 20c/kg rise in the lower-quality 500kg-plus weight category or a €100/head rise on a 500kg bullock.

Mart throughput

The last 12 months will go down as a very positive 12 months for marts.

Smaller finishers are now seeing marts as a better option to sell forward store cattle and finished cattle, as factory agents and feedlot buyers remain very active around rings buying supplies of cattle.

These bigger finishers are able to use numbers as a bargaining chip with factories to get a better beef price, so it seems to be working well for everybody.

Taking a look at the first 11 months of 2024, we see that there were 1,802,581 animals sold in marts. This compares with a figure of 1,741,308 head for the same period in 2023 or an increase of over 60,000 head (3.5%).

This compares with a 400 head drop from 2022 to 2023.

Munster remains way out in front in terms of mart throughput, with 861,429 head of cattle sold in Munster marts for the first 11 months of 2024.

This was dominated by sales of calves, with 131,047 cattle moving through Munster marts in the month of March.

There were 22 days in March 2024 where sales took place, so that means there were almost 6,000 cattle a day sold through Munster marts in March.

April was also a very busy month in Munster, with 122,509 cattle sold.

Numbers continue to contract in Ulster and Connacht, driven by a fall in suckler cow numbers in 2024.

Connacht marts held firmer than the previous 2022-2023 comparison, with just over 700 fewer cattle traded in 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.

Ulster marts saw the biggest drop, with over 3,000 fewer cattle traded in 2024 compared with 2023.

The clearance rate in mart sales also improved in 2024, with this year’s clearance coming in at 95.3% compared with last year’s figure of 94.8%.