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Record new season lamb value to decline
19 September 2019
Key points:
- New season lamb supply ramps up in NSW, slower in Victoria
- Heavier slaughter ready new season lambs
- Record new season lamb values look likely to ease towards the end of the year
New season lambs are now entering saleyards in greater numbers. The last two weeks have seen over 50,000 head of young lambs yarded in NSW, with Wagga Wagga, Forbes and Griffith all seeing considerable throughput. This puts supply slightly ahead of where new season lamb throughput in NSW was last year, although considerably back from 2017. Victorian new season lamb supply is further behind where it was in 2017 and 2018, with just over 10,000 head yarded last week - albeit October is typically still early in the Victorian season.
The new season lambs that have entered the market have been in a considerably different condition to those at the same time last year. The average carcase weight (cwt) of slaughter ready (over 18kg cwt) lambs in saleyards through the July-September quarter has risen by 300g year-on-year, to 22.5kg.
The average price for all slaughter weight lambs has increased to 828¢/kg cwt during the July-September quarter, up 1% above the same period in 2018 and a whopping 50% above the ten-year average.
The combination of increased weights and increased average prices of lambs has seen the value of an early new season lamb increase to $187.2/head. In 2018, the average lamb was worth $182.3, and in 2017 they averaged $138.8/head. Since 2009, new season lambs sold in August and September have seen an average annual increase of 7%.
Moving further into the new season (October-December), lambs are likely to start getting even heavier, with the last 3 months of the year averaging an extra 300g/per carcase from the July-September quarter. As supply increases towards the end of the year however, prices generally ease, with an average decline of 10% during the October-December period since 2009.
In the last 10 years, the average lamb value has increased once in the last quarter of the year (2017), when the average value increased by 2% or $2.40/head. If the 10-year average decline comes to fruition, new season lamb value would decline to $171.7/head for the October-December period.
© Meat & Livestock Australia Limited, 2019
