As UK lamb retail prices increased from last month, the producer share of retail price fell in May, Eblex, the organisation for the English beef ans sheep industry says.
It says that the measure declined to 50% and it is down 4% from April and 8% lower than the share seen for the same month last year.
Eblex says that this was due to the sharp fall in farmgate prices which were driven by the higher volumes of lamb coming to the market.
At the same time, retail prices have actually increased, it says.
In March, it was at its highest level so far in 2015 at 56%, and this was level with a year earlier, Eblex says.
April’s producer price fell to 54% which was 4% down on the April 2014, this due to farmgate prices declining at a sharper rate than retail prices over the course of the year, it says.
The month-on-month increase in the average retail price of lamb was driven by price increases for whole legs and fillet end legs, up by 3% and 6% respectively, the Eblex retail price survey says.
The price of most other cuts either remained stable or declined and all cuts were cheaper than in the corresponding month a year earlier in the UK, it says.
UK liveweight lamb trade
The UK liveweight lamb trade has stabilised in the past week after falls in the previous two weeks, Eblex says.
This still left prices almost 65p down from 2014 levels however, prices resumed their downwards trajectory towards the end of the period, with the SQQ on Wednesday June 3 back almost 3p on the week at 182.6p/kg, Eblex says.
Throughputs were up by 50% on the previous bank-holiday-affected week, but were roughly level with the same week in 2014, it says.
In April and May supplies slowed slightly with throughputs falling behind 2014 levels, but numbers are now expected to begin to increase again as more lambs start to reach finished weight, Eblex says.