Sheep, lamb prices lift as Fletcher’s returns after Covid shutdown

Sheep and lamb prices have lifted $10-$30, as Fletcher’s gears up to restart. This is how their buyers will be approaching sales.

Roger Fletcher says he hopes to open his Dubbo, NSW, meat processing plant tomorrow.

One of the nation’s largest livestock buyers has resumed bidding at southern saleyards today and sheep prices have lifted in response.

Meat processor Fletchers shut down its plant at Dubbo in NSW last week, as the regional city was hit by a Covid-19 outbreak.

The shutdown produced an immediate fall in mutton prices of $10-$20 a head across the eastern seaboard.

Fletcher’s buyers were purchasing at Bendigo’s market this morning with the National Livestock Reporting Service noting that competition for sheep intensified, with the return of Fletcher’s.

Sheep prices generally lifted by $10 to $30 in response and a pen of super-sized crossbred ewes topped at $296, while most heavy mutton made from $180 to $250 a head for an estimated range of 650c/kg-720c/kg carcass weight.

Roger Fletcher, Fletcher International Exports, told The Weekly Times this afternoon that he hopes to restart the Dubbo operation tomorrow.

“A lot of our people are vaccinated,” he said.

“We will start to operate tomorrow, but I tell you what, the district has been hard hit.

“If we had not pulled up, we would have been shot (hit by Covid-19), it was rampant here.”

Mr Fletcher indicated that buyers would “slowly pick up the pace, we won’t be going too hard”, as the company had plenty of its own stock already in paddocks.

Mr Fletcher expressed concerns about the “small places in the back country”, and the spread of Covid-19 beyond the metro areas.

“The world is in a lot of turmoil … but we’re confident that we can keep going, we just have to do all we can and keep Covid out.”

Last week the sheepmeat giant made the call to send workers home to protect the local community from Covid-19 and slow its spread through regional NSW.

The removal of the buying strength of Fletcher’s was noticeable at the Bendigo last week with National Livestock Reporting Service reporter Jenny Kelly noting prices for heavy mutton immediately fell $10-$20 a head.

Fletcher’s is often the biggest buyer of mutton sheep at the big prime sheep sales in Victoria and southern NSW each week, including Bendigo, Horsham and Griffith.

Meanwhile, at Bendigo today the market was generally dearer with additional gains of $10 to $30 recorded for any export and trade lambs that showed reasonable finish.

A shortage of export weight stock pushed the heaviest old lambs to a top of $357 and heavy new season lambs to $306, which is the first time ever that saleyard has sold young lambs above $300/head.

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