Bord Bia forecasts a 30,000 to 40,000 head fall in the number of finished cattle available to factories this year, the agency’s annual meat marketing seminar heard on Friday in Naas.

The shortfall, anticipated by Bord Bia, represents a contraction of around 2% on 2023’s kill of 1.78m cattle.

Throughput in 2023 was also down 2% on the previous year, with this shortfall increasing to 4% when looking at prime cattle.

There was 42,000 head fall-off in calf registrations from 2022 to 2023, as the rise in dairy births was unable to fully close the 60,000 head gap in the number of suckler calves.

Lighter weights

The impact of this year-on-year fall in cattle numbers on beef supplies is confounded by dropping carcasse weights.

The average steer killed out 4kg lighter in 2023 when compared with the previous year, while average heifer carcasse weight fell 5kg and young bulls were back to 10kg.

A trend towards lower carcasse weights is driven by high input costs resulting in lighter slaughter weights, a larger proportion of the prime kill being dairy-beef and more cull cows from the dairy herd entering factories.

At 65% of cow throughput, 2023 saw the highest recorded proportion of P-grade cows moving through factories.

EU output falling

The seminar heard that EU beef output continued on a downward trend in 2023, with a 3.6% decline in volumes over the 27 member states last year.

Bord Bia expects volumes to fall further in 2024, but imports are forecast to rise by 5.3% where shipments into the EU fell by 3.0% last year.

Beef production in the UK decreased by 1.5% in 2023 and is anticipated to fall another 0.5%.

The decline of EU consumption is expected to slow to below 1% over the coming year; consumer demand had decreased by 3.6% in the past 12 months.

Live exports

On live exports, Bord Bia stated that the export of weanlings, stores and other adult cattle totalled 115,00 head in 2023 – with just under half of these cattle heading to Northern Ireland.

Calf exports hit 208,000 head and the Netherlands remained the most important destination for this class of exports, as the Dutch took over half of all calves exported.