Hogget prices hit the slide yesterday with overall prices at some centres dropping by as much as 10p/kg on the week before and SQQ prices falling even still, by as much as 17.5p/kg.
At Caledonian Marts, Stirling, the overall entry of hoggets levelled at 204.18p/kg for 2668 sold, a decline of 10.48p on the previous week, while the 2155 hoggets in the SQQ range averaged 210.27, falling by 17.5p/kg on last week.
Other centres trading in the early part of the week haven’t found trade quite so tough as that, but there is, according to one leading processor, a definite lack of demand coming through from the retail sector and once again there are far too many heavy hoggets on the market which simply aren’t wanted by the mainstream trade, with some hoggs reaching market at 80kg!
At Ayr on Monday the 2013 hoggets levelled at 202.3p/kg a fall of 3.5p on last week and in line with the trade elsewhere. And the SQQ hoggets were broadly in line with other markets too, with 1058 selling to average 211.7p/kg a drop of 1.5p/kg on the previous week.
Meanwhile vendors at Sedgemoor Market, Somerset, yesterday would have been wishing they’d been a day earlier to sell with trade here showing a stark contrast to Monday’s prices. Prime hoggets in Greenslade Taylor Hunt’s Tuesday sale averaged 201.82p/kg for 795 sold, compared to an average of 214.28p/kg for 990 sold just a day earlier at the same market.
Reflecting the comments from the processing sector about overweight hoggets were top weights of 77kg and 76kg on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.
It will be interesting to see what the price does in the latter half of the week, but I suspect it may not get any better in the next seven days as the demand simply isn’t there at the moment.
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