Australia: Price pain pulls lamb sales into the new year

Published 2023년 3월 21일

Tridge summary

A survey conducted by MLA and AWI in October and February revealed significant fluctuations in lamb sales. The initial survey indicated an estimated 11.84 million lambs would be sold from October 2022 to June 2023, but the actual sales for Q4 2022 were 30% lower, totaling 8.75 million. Conversely, the number of lambs expected to be sold in the first half of 2023 has increased by 55% to 13.44 million. State-specific data highlights substantial discrepancies in sales between Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia.

The article also notes that east coast lamb slaughter for the first nine weeks of 2023 was 3.5% higher than the five-year average and 11% higher than the same period in 2022. Despite this, the total lamb slaughter for the year remained below pre-drought levels of 2017/18. MLA's forecast for lamb processing in 2023 is 22.63 million, which is 1 million more than the final estimate for 2022, but still falls short of the extra 3 million lambs producers anticipate selling in the first half of 2023.

Disclaimer:The above summary was generated by Tridge's proprietary AI model for informational purposes.

Original content

The reformatted survey in October had a strong focus on determining the volume of lambs to be turned off through the spring flush and into the first half of 2023. MLA and AWI surveyed the same respondents in February, to gauge how those intentions had panned out and found nearly 30% fewer lambs were sold in the last quarter of 2022, taking it from an expected 11.84 million to just 8.75 million. In turn, 55% of producers now plan to sell more lambs from January to June this year than they reported in October, taking that projected figure from 10.17 million head to 13.44 million. The survey results are broken down to a state level and show that Victorian producers sold 1 million fewer lambs than predicted from October-December 2022, and NSW producers sold 1.1 million fewer lambs. WA was down about 400,000 lambs. Expected sales in the east for the first half (January-June) of 2023 vary again with Victorian producers projecting an extra 2 million lambs to be sold in that period than ...

Source: Mecardo