Live sheep export numbers drop to lowest level in 2024

A lack of available shipping has contributed to the lower numbers, as the WA industry begins its transition out of the trade. See the latest figures.

Live sheep exports from Western Australia reached its lowest level in the 6 months to end 2024, as the industry undergoes its transition out of the trade.

A report tabled to parliament this week stated 100,046 sheep were sent to Jordan and Kuwait in the Middle East on six voyages, with an overall mortality rate of 0.11 per cent.

The previous lowest number for a six-month period was 104,809, in the back half of 2022.

As of June 30, the number of sheep exported by sea in 2025 is 268,493.

WAFarmers president Steve McGuire said the lower numbers are due to a lack of available shipping, not lack of demand from the Middle East.

“(And) no one is going to upgrade or spend money on ships if they know the trade is ending. The ships aren’t being replaced, and that’s the problem. It’s not lack of supply or demand,” he said.

WAFarmers president Steve McGuire with some of his flock at his farm in South West WA. Picture: The Australian

As the industry transitions, Mr McGuire said significant numbers of sheep going across the Nullarbor would become the norm rather than the exception, and that WA will lose at least a third of it’s flock in two years.

“Most sheep farmers in WA are croppers, and they have the machinery and knowledge to grow grain.

“Cropping is high risk, high reward, and sheep was low risk, low reward, but now they’ve made sheep high risk, low reward, so there’s a lot of people getting out of sheep.”

Mr McGuire said while prices are high now, there’s no long-term forward contracting, so there’s no guarantee the prices will continue.

“Prices were high two to three years ago. People had bought ewes for $200 three years ago, they were getting $20 for them last year,” he said.

“A number of sheep farmers said that once prices get back up, they’re getting out, and that’s what’s happened.”

It comes after the federal government released the details of the $139.7m assistance package for Western Australian farmers.

Live cattle exports on the other hand rose to its highest level since 2021 to 767,708 for 2024.

Also released this week from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry was the finding that in July last year, an Australian Rural Exports Pty Ltd ship bound for Jakarta from Portland exporting 1020 cattle had ten mortalities, a mortality rate of 0.98 per cent, the only voyage higher than the reportable level of 0.5 per cent for cattle voyages.

An investigation found the cattle deaths were due to injuries resulting from rough seas.

The company has since undertaken 26 voyages with cattle to Indonesia, Vietnam and China without incident.

Investigations from DAFF are also ongoing into a Frontier International Northern Pty Ltd cattle ship bound for Indonesia from Darwin in March last year, of which 151 cattle died, at a mortality rate of 4.53 per cent.