Export buyers create new sale record for Bendigo at $426 a head

Lambs prices are the talk of the town after new records were set at saleyards in Victoria and NSW, as bread and butter producer reap the rewards.

Lamb prices have reached record highs with heavy and trade lambs pushing up to $11/kg.

And the strength of the market is expected to continue as finished lamb availability is tight.

An exceptional “bidding war” between processors meant heavy export lambs reached $431 a head at Griffith, NSW, last Friday, smashing the national record.

The national trade lamb indicator peaked at 1049.33c/kg carcass weight on Friday — its highest ever level, before coming back to 1043c/kg after sales on Monday. It is 190c/kg higher than a month ago and 331c/kg up on the same time last year.

It also means trade lambs outpaced heavy lambs last week, with the national heavy lamb indicator also rising to a new record of 1041c/kg on Friday — however it has since overtaken trade lambs and was at an even higher level of 1064c/kg on Monday.

In saleyard scenes never witnessed before, two major export processors including JBS from Victoria paid more than $400 on five separate occasions for grain-fed lambs at Griffith on Friday, as the estimated carcass cost went over 1100c/kg.

The $431 price at Griffith was for 33 Poll Dorset-Merino lambs, bare shorn, estimated at 38-39kg, according to selling agent Anthony Mannes, Mannes Agencies.

The lambs were bred and finished by Anthony’s brothers Shane and Damian, and father Kevin Mannes, on their property at Coleambally.

They were part of a draft of 351 sent into Griffith which averaged a phenomenal $405.75 a head.

Meanwhile, Bendigo smashed the Victorian lamb price record on Monday when 12-month-old White Suffolk-composite lambs weighing about 40kg sold for $426. Thomas Foods International secured the pen.

McKean McGregor Rural livestock manager Alex Collins from Bendigo said it was an “exceptionally strong sale”.

“The real reward comes for your bread-and-butter type producers turning out a heavy trade lamb, all of a sudden they’re in a $260-300 bracket,” he said.

“It’s purely the fact that the top-end weight in export lambs around the country is thinning out very quickly, and everyone had forward agreements that gave them good coverage until the first week of June or last week of May.”

Meat and Livestock Australia senior market information analyst Erin Lukey said historically, price strength persists through winter until new-season lamb arrivals.

“With all three major indicators at record levels, ongoing processor activity and supply dynamics will be key to how the market evolves through the seasonal low turn-off period (winter),” she said.