Factories slash beef prices

Marts: Panic selling of cattle by finishers led to a slashing of quoted prices at the factories yesterday where producers were being offered up to 9c/kg (3p/lb) drop on last week as supplies flowed in.

The extent of the drop in price is not justified by a weakening of the market for Irish beef in Britain and on the Continent over the past week, but is the processors’ reaction to the surge in supplies of cattle which has seen factory throughput soar to 6,000 head per week higher than for the same period last year.

Irish prices to producers, which so far this year have closely marked prices in the North and Britain, have slipped to between 10c/kg (4p/lb) and 20c/kg (8p/lb) under the going returns in the North and Britain, as Irish finishers take their lowest year to date return for cattle.