Sept 2022 Introduction A multitude of challenges persist around the globe. Severe droughts and floods. Ukraine/Russia war continues with the well documented grain shortage and prices ensuing. Europe is in the grips of an energy crisis with costs ballooning. Lamb Schedule : Updated graph below - indicates the lamb schedule is flattening and should. Beef and Lamb prices remain firm with no end in sight. but appear stable. The NZD weakening has offset a ‘generally’ softer international market. The NZ Pork Industry faces challenges with increased costs and the phasing out of farrowing crates over next five years. The local schedule & prices are lifting significantly. Bidfood remains fortunate with its strong relationships and further consolidation of our procurement program’s which we have in place with key NZ beef, lamb and pork suppliers additionally complimented by our imported pork program partners. Poultry – Chicken Lamb Lamb price increases have stabilised but remain firm and shortages in processing staff remains challenging. A ‘generally’ softer international market has been offset by a weakening NZD. Pricing pressures continue with no end sight. We have just seen feed price increases jumped on chicken processors/producers with two days notice! Chicken processors continue to rationalise production as staffing availability allows. Thoughts exist that the lamb schedule will remain firm until Christmas then pull back. Many ‘boned’ cuts aren’t in vogue with the big processors due to labour/production constraints. Still chasing the volume markets namely China that can take basic bone in cuts. Meat and Lamb, Australia predict their national flock to grow by 4.9% to 74.4 million head in 2022, reaching its highest level since 2013 It is expected that this will square off against NZ in the market place. What impact will this have on pricing and when? Chicken processors are now dealing with older and therefore larger birds. As a consequence of the staff shortages, they are still having to hold birds in sheds, well past their “normal” 42 - 46 days old, in an effect to slow the flow of birds to plant, but now we are processing birds up to 60+ days old, which leaves little or no opportunity for Graded Bone in portions S/M/L as they are all well outside spec. It is hoped this will return to some form of normality staff levels improve during September. .
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