This week’s sheep trade started in a weaker manner, with quotes falling 10c/kg on last Thursday’s levels.

Quotes have remained unchanged since then, leaving this week’s base quotes at a range of €4.90/kg to €5.10/kg.

Kildare Chilling tops the table with its base quote of €5.10/kg plus 10c/kg quality assurance (QA) bonus.

Dawn Meats is quoting a base of €5.00/kg, with the two ICM plants dropping under this mark and quoting a base of €4.90/kg, while Kepak’s long absence from the quotes table continues. Groups and sellers with large numbers on hand are securing returns of €5.20/kg to €5.30/kg.

Individual sellers with lower negotiating power are securing returns from €5.05/kg to €5.15/kg in plants with lower quotes and €5.20/kg in Kildare Chilling by means of its higher base price.

Factories are being helped in their attempts to pull prices by continued high throughput levels. Last week’s kill increased marginally by about 300 head and was recorded at 61,206. It continues to be supported by a high ewe and ram kill of 10,968 head.

Ewe quotes are unchanged at €2.50/kg, with top prices 10c/kg to 20c/kg higher leaving the mart a good alternative outlet.

Northern factories also tried to enforce some downward price pressure in the last week. Base quotes are reported at £4.30/kg to £4.35/kg, which is the equivalent of €4.73/kg to €4.78/kg at an exchange rate of 90.7p/€1.

Returns of 5p/kg to 10p/kg higher are being secured by regular sellers and groups.

Prices have eased slightly in live sales, but agents purchasing for southern plants remain active and are being helped in recent weeks by the exchange rate being in their favour.

The number of sheep imported south for direct slaughter last week recovered from the previous week’s dip and increased by 1,239 head to reach 7,526.

The AHDB reports the British deadweight lamb price for the last three weeks as unchanged and averaging £4.63/kg (€5.09/kg). The SQQ liveweight price was reported as falling below the £2.00/kg (€2.20/kg) mark on Tuesday with a week-on-week easing of 10p/kg.

The results of the June 2020 New Zealand livestock survey are leading to predictions of the 2020 lamb crop falling by 4.2% or some 980,000 head.

While the mature breeding ewe flock was marginally higher at 16.86m head (+1%), the number of hoggets incorporated into breeding flocks fell by 8.1% (740,000 head) to 8.4 million hoggets.

This reduction was due to farmers destocking to deal with drought conditions which also had negative effects on the 2020 lamb crop. Ewe pregnancy scanning results are 5% to 10% lower due to feed shortages. The report also points to a potentially lower lamb crop if adverse weather hits at lambing with ewes in a poorer body condition than normal. This will have knock-on consequences for the volume of sheep meat available for export with lower volumes coming onto the EU market reported as helping to increase prices this year.