Watch: Bord Bia beef market outlook and review at Ploughing 2025
At the National Ploughing Championships earlier this week, Agriland caught up with Bord Bia beef sector manager Mark Zieg to hear his outlook on the Irish beef trade from a Bord Bia perspective.
Zieg explained that the price increases over the past year have been primarily driven by "scarcity of supply both in Ireland and in our biggest markets".
He said that the drop in Irish, UK, and EU cattle supplies "has created a lot of demand for us in the markets" which has pushed cattle prices up and also pushed some cattle out earlier in the year than originally expected.
He said: "To put some figures on it [the drop in beef supplies], the UK will be down by 5% this year.
"So far, production in Europe is down by 8%, and some of the individual countries are 13%, 14%, and 18% down - so it's very scarce [beef] in terms of supply.
"That has been pulling in a little bit more of non-EU product, but that is really only to plug the gap that is there from European product."
The Bord Bia beef sector manager noted: "We are coming in now shortly into the season where factories will be building supplies for the Christmas trade".
"We did see a good lift in demand for beef around that, especially from the UK last year, and we would expect to see that from the domestic market and the UK retailers again.
"It's a major time for them and that will surely develop some demand for cattle again now over the next few weeks."
Commenting on supplies into the final quarter of this year, he said: "It's looking like tight supplies."
"We've seen over the last number of weeks that cattle are very tight now and that would remain so definitely for the rest of the year."
He said that the Bord Bia estimate is for the 2025 Irish beef kill to be approximately 90-100,000 head down on last year.
