The sight of traffic jams and queues into McDonald’s restaurants on Wednesday after six of its restaurants reopened will be a welcome one for beef finishers up and down the country.

The gradual reopening of food service outlets has put some bite into the beef market, especially towards the south of the country where factories are anxious to ramp up production ahead of future demand.

Factory reopening

Dawn Meats has announced its dedicated McDonald’s plant in Carroll’s Cross, Co Waterford, will be reopening on Monday. In a normal year, the plant produces 400m beef burgers for the fast food chain’s operations across Europe.

The increase is a sign that demand is growing and things are slowly coming back to normal in the meat trade

On the beef price front, prime in-spec cattle are in highest demand, with quotes increasing slowly again this week. The new base price for steers is €3.60/kg, with €3.65/kg being paid for heifers. There are deals being done at €3.70/kg depending on numbers and quality.

Given the growing demand for manufacturing beef, cull cows continue to be in big demand, with O+ cows now at €2.90/kg. Again, €3.00/kg is available for farmers with larger numbers. Factory buyers have been active in marts over the last week, hoovering up any slaughter-fit cows and paying very good money for them.

Kill increase

Despite concerns around outbreaks of COVID-19 in meat plants, this week’s kill increased to 26,911.

It is the first substantial increase since early February but remains some way off the kill for the same week in 2019 at 32,853. However, the increase is a sign that demand is growing and things are slowly coming back to normal in the meat trade.

Most of this rise came from an extra 924 cows killed in the last week compared to the previous week.