Year’s final figures

Marts: Higher carcass weights partly offset a decline of almost 7% in cattle throughput at the factories for 2005, while throughput of sheep increased by 2%, the final figures of the year have shown.

Just over 1.6 million head of cattle were processed at the export factories.

This was a drop of 6.8%, equivalent to 118,000 head less going through the plants, but the drop in numbers was partly compensated for by an increase of 4% in the average weight of carcasses.