Despite a steadying in factory price, it appears confidence has been rocked in finishers who are around the mart rings buying stores, with prices of these having eased consistently over the last few weeks.

We see some see-sawing of prices from week to week. Last week, heifers were up in price and are now back below where they were two weeks ago.

Having talked to several factory agents over the last few weeks, despite factories not running to full capacity they have still managed to stockpile beef.

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Simply put, the demand for beef waned and they appear to have been left with beef in every chilled corner of their facilities.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow for the finishers I mentioned above who got caught out with high store prices.

With breeding stock, the phrase “the day you buy is the day you sell” is often stated, meaning a better type breeding animal will ultimately leave better progeny that will command a higher price.

For cattle finishers, a more acceptable one would be “the day you sell is the day you buy”.

After achieving some high margins last year off ‘cheap’ stores, they went back around the rings last back end and paid handsome money for cattle. They’ve taken a hit on these cattle and consequently have a limited budget now.

Regarding the demand in beef, it’s a hard one to fathom, but price point was probably what caught us out. White meat (pork and chicken) is and always will be cheaper from a price point of view for the consumer and at the rate beef prices were going, it was rapidly going to become a luxury product.

So, which was the lesser of two evils - a lower beef price with higher consumption or beef price to be high but low volumes of stock required.

In reality, this would never happen, with price based off supply and demand and, as we have seen in the last few months, even a low supply cannot counteract a low demand on occasion.

Around the ring

This week, we saw store prices fall again this week, with weanlings also taking a hit.

Lighter cattle have been hardest hit, with store bullocks and heifers below 500kg seeing a price fall of 9c to 15c/kg on average.

While heifers saw a bounce across all weight classES over the last week or two, this has been firmly peeled back again, with top-end heavy heifers above 600kg falling by 49c/kg.

Heavy and forward-type bullocks have seen marginal increases of 9c to 10c/kg on average, putting them slightly ahead of where they were two weeks ago.

Weanlings appear to have fallen drastically in price, but numbers passing through rings are the lowest they will be all year, with quality also low according to mart managers.

There is still some value to be got for buyers though.

Cull cow prices have also rebounded, with an average price of €2.96/kg recorded in MartBids analysis this week for cull cows, up 19c/kg on last week, while the top and bottom third of cows are trading at €3.70/kg (up 40c/kg) and €2.33/kg (up 17c/kg) respectively.