The factory trade continues to steam serenely along with base quotes for bullocks remaining fixed at €4.10/kg, with a select few scrapping into €4.15/kg.
nce quality assured and under thirty months, these figures generally transform into €4.30-4.35/kg. If Aberdeen Angus, you can add another 15-20c/kg.
Base quotes for heifers also remain stuck on €4.15/kg, although €4.20/kg appeared to becoming a little easier in some plants last week. Again adding your quality assured bonus of 15- 20c/kg, you're up to €4.35-4.40/kg while those with R equals and R minus Angus can look forward to a base of €4.50-4.60/kg with your R plus getting you an additional 6c/kg to bring you to a possible top of €4.66/kg.
However, once you slip into an O grade your base price can drop by as much as 30c/kg, and 36c/kg if it's a P.
Official figures from the Department of Agriculture show that for 2020 of the 658,695 bullocks slaughtered at exporting plants 46.1% of graded O with 10.8pc grading P, that left just 32.4pc of steers to grade R.
Go back ten years to 2011, you find that 40.1pc of steers graded O with just 6.1pc graded as P's while R's were up at 43.6pc.
On the heifer side, last year's kill 479,876 saw R's account for 43.5pc of the overall as against 57.7pc in 2011. The percentage of O grade heifers has grown from 29.1pc in 2011 to 37pc last year, while P grades accounted for 3.7pc in 2020 as against 2.6pc ten years ago.
The only positives from the figures are that U grades now make up 15.6pc of the heifer kill as against 10.2pc in 2011, while U grade bullocks were up by 1pc at 10.9pc in 2020 compared to 9.9pc in 2011.
These figures show that the beef kill in this country is becoming less beef and more dairy bred. Does that matter? I would venture to suggest that from the processor's point of view, it doesn't.
Data from Bord Bia clearly shows that when it comes to factories paying for cull cows Ireland's overall average price for O3 grades to the middle of May this year at €3.11c/kg while tied with France was well ahead of the rest of the EU.
In relation to the UK and Northern Ireland, we were off the pace on average by 20-33c/kg, with their averages for O3's coming in at €3.31c/kg and 3.44c/kg. However, that 20-33c/kg price gap pales into insignificance when compared against the difference between average prices for steers here and that North of the border and in Britain.
Over the same time period, Jan 1 to May 15, the North's average price for R grade steers was €4.46/kg, with the British price averaging €4.55/kg as against our cumulative R3 average of €3.88/kg. That's a difference of 58-67c/kg respectively, more than twice the difference when compared to that on the cull cow side.
These figures demonstrate that cow beef appears more suitable to the factories for the markets they have than prime beef. The fall-off in quality of heifers and bullocks is of little consequence to the factories because once an animal grades below the base price, you're headed for cull cow country.
As shown above, last year 56.9pc of our national steer kill was below that cut off, with 40.7pc of the heifer kill falling short of the basic base price.
