A record 4,000 Brahman steers and spayed heifers bred in Australia's Northern Territory sold as one lot in Friday's AuctionsPlus online sale, in a deal worth around 6.6 million Australian dollars, Beef Central reported. It is the largest single lot offered in the online platform's 40 years; the previous largest single lot was 1,200 head, also Territory cattle.
The mixed-sex cattle, aged 18 to 30 months and averaging 349 kg, were bred on MacLachlan Pastoral Group's Killarney Station and grazed at Woolner Station on the floodplain near Darwin. They drew 11 bids, ten above the reserve, and sold for 474.3 cents a kilogram liveweight, or $1,653 a head. Similar boat steers out of Darwin were trading at around 455-460 c/kg, so the result was at least 15 c/kg above the going rate.
Killarney cattle normally go from the paddock into the live export trade through Darwin, mostly by expressions of interest. This year the owners chose an open auction for the first time, as Indonesia's attempt to cap meat prices weighed on the export trade, rain lifted demand across eastern Australia and the domestic young-cattle market climbed; the Eastern Young Cattle Indicator rose 110 c/kg in a month.
AuctionsPlus does not name buyers, but the buyer was neither a live exporter nor based in the Territory, Beef Central said. The heavier cattle are expected to go to feedlots and the lighter ones onto pasture, with delivery in the first week of December at the RTA yards at Noonamah. Freight to Cloncurry now costs about 40 c/kg, up from 28-32 c/kg before recent fuel price rises.
Agent Paul McCormick of Elders Katherine, who assessed the cattle as fat score 2 and in very good export order, said selling at this time of year was normal but the method was not. The aim was to bring more transparency to the old private tender, he said, and "the weather, as it turned out, was probably a game changer". For Indonesian feedlots that have questioned recent prices, the sale shows the trade has competition for top Brahman feeder cattle. The report was written by Jon Condon.
Photo: Cgoodwin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Beef Central
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