Sheep farmers can breathe a small sigh of relief this week, as the consecutive price cuts seen in recent weeks have finally stalled, with factories maintaining last week’s prices.

Base quotes for Thursday for those factories that are quoting range from €6.00/kg to €6.30/kg.

Irish Country Meats (ICM) Plants in Camolin and Navan have held last week’s price, with a base of €6.00/kg plus their 20c/kg quality assurance (QA) payment.

Kildare Chilling, Kepak Group and Dawn Meats have not quoted this week, with a good deal of farmer frustration surrounding this.

Ballon Meats has also held its price from last week, with €6.30/kg being paid for spring lamb, with cull ewe quotes at €3.30/kg, significantly higher than the €2.90/kg quoted by ICM.

Producer groups have reportedly secured in the region of €6.30/kg to €6.35/kg, with individuals supplying high numbers and some producer groups securing €6.40/kg and upwards for top-end, well-fleshed lambs.

Cuts of 50c/kg to €1/kg are still in place for lambs killing underweight and under-fleshed in an effort to stall farmers in bringing these lambs through to market, with processing costs on these lighter lambs affecting profitability on the factories’ side.

These lighter lambs coming on stream has meant that the majority of factories are striking deals for 22kg carcase limits, with the two ICM factories officially quoting for up to 22kg.

Factory agents have reported that carcases are typically coming in 0.5kg below the normal for the time of year, a mix of poorer weather conditions and farmers drafting lambs at lighter weights to beat the price slide a likely cause of this.

Performance

Last week with the bank holiday saw a reduced window for lamb processors, with 39,494 lambs killed last week.

In comparison, 47,106 lambs were slaughtered in the same week last year.

The lack of numbers being presented for sale, plus the lighter carcase weights being seen, is set to put pressure on factories.

While quotes may not increase dramatically, this should hopefully see the bottoming out of quotes at this week’s prices.

The fact that some factories are still quoting €4.80/kg for hoggets is surprising, given that quotes are generally unattainable this time of the year for them and likely indicates that factories are running tight on supply.

An improvement in weather conditions will also compound the supply issue, as farmers will be happier to hold lambs on farm.

Lamb price in mainland UK has also seen an increase this week, with average quotes of £5.74/kg (€6.66/kg).

Similar to Ireland, a drop in numbers presenting to factories of 11.3% in the week has resulted in a stabilisation of quotes.