Beef price tracker 2

Abp Poland is paying more for polish cattle than in Ireland. UK beef is slightly up, what a shower.

They made their millions off the backs of irish Farmers, their plants were so profitable they moved to the UK and got control there. When they almost went under every irish beef farmer paid by cheap beef to get them back.

Now they are doing it again to recoup their losses of last year. Ordinary farmers should call a halt to their winter finishing animal and put them out on grass, stop making the rich richer.

Irish beef is their most profitable of all.

If you look at it from a purely business point of view they probably learned their lesson last year that raising prices doesn’t create any more cattle that weren’t there anyway so they’re probably saying what’s the point. They’ll just sit and wait and the cattle will eventually come to them.

They got caught last year by contracting too much beef early in the year, thry still over contracted intonthe summer. In the autumn they just got caught by a perfect storm. A good autumn allowed lads to continue to carry cattle outside, lads held back cattle first tomput on more weight and then to avoid a 2025 tax issue by selling in 2026.

Stupidity is continuing to do the same thing and expect a different result. One thing about processors continuing being stupid is not in there forte.

If a protest is where it goes realistic aims are necessary. Its changes to regulations and pricing models to be displayed by processors and available to all farmers

Agriland.ie saying the average price of steers last week was 7.31 I don't know of any steer getting that price. They must have killed all E grade cattle that week! I have been harping on about this for months now. Factories are paying big money to any select few to screw the rest of us. They are totally in command and control mode now. I'd be very wary of buying any class of a beast now.

You have bern giving that advice for over a month now not to book in cattle. The lad that has taken your advice has seen his beef price drop 40-50c/ kg and the waiting period is 10-14 days.

Big difference between a lad killing 200/ year mostly out of the shed over a 4-6 week period or even a lad that kills half that amount over 2-3 weeks and a lad with a load.

However according to Micheal Coughlan in the FI large finishers in the South have to wait to get cattle booked in. @epfff is probably sending a load most week and he is struggling to get cattle slaughtered.

Kill is 63k less than last year at this stage that is over the total predicted less cattle available this year. What you are spouting dose not add up

I will.print Martin Coughlan piece. So these Southern based finishers are BSing. You can get cattle booked in at will at 10-20c/ kg above factory quotes. You must know someone that knows someone. If that was working for most tanglers I know they would be keeping mum, and replacing what they sold......below is the piece

The southern-based winter finisher at the end of my phone was angry. Having seen factory prices for bullocks and heifers fall from €7.10-7.20/kg at the start of February last week saw him quoted €6.90-6.80/kg for heifers and bullocks respectively with up to two weeks’ waiting time to get them away.

Then on Friday he was told this week’s quotes from his regular factory would be back another 10c/kg for bullocks at €6.70/kg with heifers back 15c/kg to €6.75/kg. Quotes in west are reported for this week to range from €6.70/kg for bullocks with heifers on a base of €6.80/kg.

He described this latest cut to factory quotes as “a slap in the face” for winter finishers. He also described those on the factory side at present as being incredibly “arrogant and disrespectful” in the way they are handling suppliers. The message from this man’s factory procurement officer was “The price is the price and you’ll have to get in line if you want them killed in the next week or so”.

When asked about the price and speeding up when his factory would take them, he was told, “You can try elsewhere if you like”. So much for factory loyalty.

Another finisher in the west told me that his factory agent told him he’d “be lucky to get his cattle killed in ten days”.

In essence the last three months have been the equivalent of a wet October and November when numbers and conditions drive factory pricing south.

All of this at a time when the price gap between Ireland and Britain is widening. Last week Meat Promotion Wales reported the overall average factory price for steers across Britain as being the equivalent of €7.34/kg, with the quoted base price for steers here this week at €6.80/kg; that’s a difference of 54c/kg or €189/hd on a 360kg carcass between here and the UK.

And what of the stories of heavy cattle being bought by factory agents and dealers in marts and factory slaughtered in short order while genuine finishers are forced to wait?

One feeder told me that he and several other feeders in his area had a strongly worded conversation with several of those buying beef for a quick turnaround in their local mart. “We told them we’d but the boot into the price and leave them up at stupid money and see how they liked it.”

With oil companies being accused of “price gouging” in relation to fuel prices due to American attacks on Iran, those currently supplying cattle to processors here can be forgiven for feeling the same way in relation to falling factory prices delivered on the back of rising weekly kill numbers, 32,906 for the week ending March 8.

IFA Livestock Chair Declan Hanrahan has hit out at the behaviour of meat factories in “Dropping prices for the most expensive cattle to produce when our key export markets are strong. EU prices have now surged past ours, something that hasn’t happened since the end of 2024. Factories need to urgently re-assess their behaviour of the last few weeks, stand strong and return viable prices to farmers or there will be longer term repercussions for the sector,” Mr Hanrahan stated.

Quotes for both young bulls and culls are also back, see price table.

Where are ye getting a bottoming out of 6.50 base price from lads?

A gut feeling or based on projected numbers coming on stream post this flush of cattle?