A live winter finishing webinar on www.farmersjournal.ie highlighted the challenges the sector faces in returning a positive margin for the producer next spring.

This is nothing new to winter finishers, as they have struggled to get out of the system in a positive territory for the last four or five years.

However, this year there is the added threat of a hard Brexit in just three months time.

In the event of a no-deal Brexit, the tariffs placed on beef under WTO rules would nearly double the cost of every kilo of Irish beef entering Britain.

The webinar highlighted the situation where, if WTO tariffs were in place post-Brexit, Ireland would pay 19% of the total EU27 tariffs on just 5% of total EU27 sales to the UK.

Germany, on the other hand, which accounts for 28% of total EU27 sales to the UK, would pay just 17% of total tariffs.

Beef price bottom line

Irish Farmers Journal analysis has shown that a beef price of €4.56/kg is required to leave a €100 margin over costs.

The webinar discussion highlighted that only the top 15% of producers would be able to achieve the liveweight gains.

Research has shown that in order for steer production systems to be viable, a 40c/kg premium over bull beef production systems is required to overcome the efficiencies lost with steers compared with bulls.

Bull beef systems in Ireland over the last number of years have been shown to be the most profitable.

However, there has been a vast reduction in the number of bulls being finished due to processors really tightened down on the system over the last 12 months.