Live export sheep figures: Numbers are down and keep falling

Live export once underpinned sheep prices, but falling numbers show it has less influence. See the figures.

Australia’s live sheep exports have fallen to the lowest level in years.

By the end of November, just 427,591 sheep were consigned to live export destinations dominated by the Middle East.

This was a massive 73 per cent decline from the same period five years ago, according to figures collated by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Australia.

Exports were exclusively from West Australia, with five shipments totalling 69,000 sheep going to Israel for breeding purposes.

The remainder of the sheep went into the Middle East destined for slaughter, with the breakdown in order of size showing:

– Kuwait took 246,484

– United Arab Emirates took 45,278

– Oman took 25,000

– Qatar took 25,000

– Jordan took 16,521

The number of live sheep exported has been declining steadily, from 1.89 million in 2017 to 575,529 in 2021 and looks to fall again when final 2022 figures are released.

Episode 3 director Matt Dalgleish said the live sheep trade for 2022 was “underwhelming”.

“The decline has been particularly evident since the introduction of the northern hemisphere summer moratorium in 2018 (which halts exports during the southern hemisphere winter),” Mr Dalgleish said.

“Annual live sheep export volumes are around one-quarter of what they were five years ago.”

He said a decade ago, the live sheep export industry was both an east coast and west coast affair.

“In 2011, about 30 per cent of the live sheep export volumes exited the country from ports outside of Western Australia,” Mr Dalgleish said.

However, since 2018, the trade has been predominantly a Western Australian-led industry, in terms of the port of exit with at least 98 per cent of the annual live export turnoff of sheep leaving from the west.”

According to official figures, there have been no live sheep exported from Portland since 2019, when there was a shipment of 2650 for breeding purposes to Russia.

And there have been no live sheep exports from the Port of Adelaide since 2018 when there were two shipments totalling 41,000 sheep which went to Qatar and the UAE.

Meanwhile, there has been a drop in mortality levels in the past five years in live sheep exports.

In 2017, 14,094 sheep died during shipment or 0.8 per cent of total numbers, but this fell to 1381 or 0.2 per cent in 2021 in the most up-to-date figures available.