Poor weather drives up the price of lamb

“Contributing to the strength of the market is a continued lower volume of lambs reaching the marketplace”, said Ashworth. He explained that the poor weather this summer had slowed lamb growth rates and had also created backlogs of work on farms as both the grass and cereal harvest had been  delayed.

“Evidence from the auction markets suggest lamb availability is 10 per cent lower than last year, although quality is similar. Nevertheless, although supplies are tighter, Scottish abattoirs have maintained their kill levels at similar levels to last year,” he said.

Also helping the market keep its strength is the lower Scottish lamb crop, arising from the fall in the ewe population on last year and some heavy losses at lambing due to wet weather.

Across Great Britain as a whole, this shortfall was likely to be offset by the higher Welsh and English ewe population reported in the December 2011 census, with Welsh numbers up 5 per cent and English up 2.5 per cent.

Looking ahead, Ashworth feared that the low levels of lamb being marketed in the past couple of months due to poorer growth rates might lead to a “backlog” building up on farms.

“The challenge for producers going forward is to manage the delivery of these lambs on to the market. In Ireland, we are beginning to see the consequences of a reported increase in Irish ewe numbers, 4 per cent in December 2011.” “Since the beginning of June, the volume of lambs reaching Irish abattoirs has been 7 per cent higher than last year and prices are struggling to hold on to last year’s levels.

“There are some assertions that the Irish price is only  holding steady because of the lack of competition from UK lambs in the French market through a combination of lower volumes and stronger sterling exchange rates.”

Commenting on consumption, Ashworth said that there seemed to be a revival in buying lamb, with an increase in sales in June. He thought that while some of this might have been driven by the poor weather, it was also possible some had been driven by improved price competitiveness of lamb in store.

Despite adverse currency moves, sheepmeat exports had stayed stable this year with provisional data for exports during June showing they were barely  2 per cent down on last year.