Agricultural News
Boxed Beef Sales Remain Strong
Mon, 27 Apr 2015 18:54:39 CDT
On a regular basis, Ed Czerwein of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Market News Office in Amarillo, Texas offers a review of the previous week's boxed beef trade. Here is the weekly boxed beef trade for week ending April 25, 2015. The daily spot Choice box beef cutout ended the week last Friday at $256.99 which was only 80 cents lower but the cutout had been above 260 again on Wednesday and Thursday loosing $3.00 on Friday. There were 687 loads sold for the week in the daily box beef cutout. It was about 10 percent of the total volume. The daily cutout has a tendency to be higher early in the week as retailer reorder after the busy weekend, especially on Monday but has dropped later in the week during the past few weeks.
The Comprehensive or weekly average Choice cutout which includes all types of sales including the daily spot cutout was $257.57 which was $1.61 higher. There were 6,482 total loads sold which was 108 loads higher than the previous week. The formula sales were at 3,258 loads which was 48 loads lower than last week and are about 50 percent of the total loads sold.
Exports were at 920 loads which was 39 loads lower. Sales to our North American Free Trade Agreement neighbors totaled 204 loads and 716 loads were shipped overseas.
The outfront sales were at 1,094 loads which was 24 loads higher than last week. The biggest outfront sales were round, chuck and brisket products and their average prices were $7-19 dollars below the formula prices. However there were a few ribeyes and short loins that were 9-80 below the formula prices but they had been very high in recent weeks.
Taking a look at the primal cuts, The choice chuck, and round primals were steady to one lower again and the rib was two lower after many weeks of a strong rally. The Choice loins did continue to climb and were six higher. Fifty percent trimmings are used by many sausage and hot dog makers and had jumped to 130 during most of the past two weeks but they dropped down to 110 on Friday.
The cow cutout and the 90 percent trimmings were both steady to firm, which has held up very well in recent months as the fresh beef imports have increased. The demand for ground beef and manufacturing beef for sausage products has been very good and no doubt has picked up as the grilling and ball park season have started.
The latest report of imported meat passed for entry into the U.S. for April 18 showed that week we imported 27,675 metric tons of fresh beef which was 1,200 metric tons higher than the previous week and equates to over 60 million pounds imported for that one week which would be another very big week. Year-to-date for the first 16 weeks of this year we are still running 40 percent higher fresh beef imports than last year and that is on top of last years increases. Australia is up 83 percent, but New Zealand has now gone up to 30 percent.
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