Each week- Ed Czerwein with the USDA Market News office in Amarillo, Texas compiles a report on the boxed beef trade for the previous week- looking at overall sales of wholesale beef, exports and more. Here is his latest report, released on Monday afternoon, September 14- you can listen to his commentary by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story:
Weekly boxed beef trade for week ending Sep 12 The daily spot Choice box beef cutout ended the week last Fri at $236.09 which was $3.98 lwr compared to previous Friday. There were 665 loads sold for the week in the daily box beef cutout, which was almost 10 % of the total volume. The weakening daily cutout which has declined 10 out of the last 12 working days but has started to drop at a much higher rate now that retailers have restocked shelves after the recent holiday. It has dropped over $7.00 in the past two weeks.
The Comprehensive or weekly avg Choice cutout which includes all types of sales including the daily spot cutout was $235.56 which was $2.62 lwr. Last summer the Weekly avg Choice cutout dropped from $258 the week ending Aug 9 to $238 the week ending October 4th then started its normal fall increase.
There were 6344 total loads sold which was 719 loads lower than the previous week. The formula sales were at 3165 loads which was 298 loads lower than last week and was 50 percent of the total loads sold this week.
Exports as reported on the Boxed Beef report represent primarily muscle cuts and they were at 721 loads which was exactly the same as the previous week. 105 loads were sold to our NAFTA Neighbors and 616 loads were shipped overseas.
The out-front sales which won’t be delivered for at least 22 days were 1358 loads which was 247 loads lower than last week.
Taking a look at the weekly avg primal cut prices. The Choice middle meats which are the loins and Ribs were $4 to $6 lower. The choice chuck and the rniddle meats were $1-$4 lower. The fifty percent trimmings market last year in August was over $1.50 and ended this last week at 58 cents.
The Cow Cutout was $2.50 lower and those ninety percent trimmings ended the week about $4.00 lower compared to the previous Friday. We have been drifting lower but the limited seasonal cow numbers during the summer have helped to keep the prices from a dramatic decline, but that is starting to change now also. The upcoming fall run normally provides more available slaughter cows and lower cow meat prices. However like we said last week, that did not happen last year because of tremendous additional buying power from those ranchers that were rebuilding their cow herds.
The latest report of Imported meat passed for entry into the US for Sep 05 showed that week we imported 20,317 metric tons of fresh beef which was about 2200 metric tons lower and equates to about 44 million lbs imported for that one week. Ytd for the first 36 wks of this year we are running 29 % higher fresh beef imports than last year and that is on top of last year’s increases. Australia was 53 % higher, and New Zealand was up 20%.
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