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US beef market showing little activity this week
26 November 2015
This week’s report from the Steiner Consulting Group indicated that there was very little movement in the US imported beef market. Australian exporters were not showing much product to the market – likely due to the slowdown in slaughter and the lack of quota available for the end of 2015. Additionally, US end users have a short trading week with a focus on other activities, with Thanksgiving on Thursday 26 November.
The weekly report notes that consumer demand for ground beef is fairly weak at present, and may require some retailers to start selling it on special to move product. This would move the retail sector in the same direction that the cattle and wholesale beef markets have been moving over the past few months in the US. While chicken and pork are so much cheaper than beef, it will remain difficult to keep moving large volumes of beef through supply chains.
The imported beef market was mostly steady this week – the imported 90CL cow beef indicator lost the 0.5US¢ that it gained last week, back to 189.5US¢/lb CIF. This drop was accentuated in A$ terms by a small jump in the value of the A$ against the US$ – the indicator was down 7.6A¢, to 577.8A¢/kg CIF.
