The Islamic religious festival of Eid Al-Adha, which took place from 9 to 13 July, has once again underpinned the highest weekly sheep kill with throughput recorded at 78,164 head. This represents an increase of 23,066 head on the previous week with factories pulling out all the stops to capitalise on the spike in demand.

Factories pull prices

Unfortunately the positive performance of last week looks like it will be quickly undone with factories moving to pull prices by 30c/kg this week.

This has materialised in two steps with base quotes reducing by 10c/kg at the start of the week, while base quotes for Thursday have been pulled by 20c/kg back to a base of €7/kg.