Marts are on the winddown for Christmas this week, with many of the last sales of 2024 taking place in marts on Thursday and Friday.

This year will see a two-week break, with most marts not starting back up rostrums until the week beginning Monday 6 January 2025.

Taking a look back, 2024 will go down as a positive one for marts. Marts continue to be the place of choice for selling animals, with farm-to-farm sales tracking downwards since 2020 and mart sales increasing year on year.

March and April are two of the busiest months of the year in terms of mart sales, with calf sales in Munster dominating the numbers.

The traditional grass buyer also generally moves out in April, where numbers of store cattle then come out to meet the big demand.

This is followed by October as being the next busiest month with weanlings dominating mart sales at the back end of the year.

Marts continue to evolve, with organic sales now popping up on a monthly basis, especially in western marts, to meet both seller requirements and meet buyer demand.

Marts are also faced with some big challenges, with falling numbers of suckler cows, particularly in the west of the country where the shortfall isn’t being made up by dairy cows.

It will be inevitable that some rationalisation takes place if suckler cow numbers drop to the predicted 600,000 cows by 2030.

The rise of the mega finisher has meant that one in four cattle being slaughtered on a weekly basis are coming from feedlots.

While many feel that this is placing too much power in the hands of factories where contracts are issued to these large factories, others feel that the fact that these large finishers are purchasing cattle in marts has helped the trade.

More and more smaller finishers are choosing to sell cattle in mart rings and let the bigger finishers who have a more certain beef price to work off buy away.

Taking a look at this week’s Martbids analysis table, we see that it was the light weanling that was the highlight of the trade.

Top-quality weanling bulls in the 200kg to 300kg weight bracket came in at €4.03/kg this week, up 21c/kg on the previous week’s trading.

Average bull weanlings in the same weight bracket came in at €3.30/kg, up 12c/kg on last week.

Light weanling heifers also had a good week, with farmer buyers dominating the trade.

Top-quality weanling heifers in the 200kg to 300kg weight bracket came in at €3.70/kg.

Exporters continue to drive the trade for the heavier weanling, with top-quality weanling bulls in the 300kg to 400kg weight bracket coming in at €3.96/kg this week.

Bullocks and heifers also saw good demand, with top-quality bullocks in the 500kg to 600kg weight bracket coming in at €3.42/kg this week, up 18c/kg on the previous week.

Next week, we will take a look at the last 12 months in terms of the cattle trade and how it compares with previous years.