US Perspective—30.11.10
30/11/2010
Courtesy of www.thejacobsen.com
The market remained firm last week with prices moving upwards for most steer and cow hide selections. In general, steer hide prices increased around $0.50 with HTS and BBS selling between $74 and $74.50. Cowhides sold up around a dollar in a number of cases.
The US Department of Agriculture export sales report for week ending November 18 had lower-than-average combined wet blue and hide sales of 589,400 and above average shipments at 650,100. Wet blue sales numbers totalled 101,100 with 36,900 scheduled for 2011 shipments. Below is the three-year comparison of slaughter, sales, and shipments.
Slaughter, sales and shipments through week 46 in 2010 are 29,935,819; 26,908,895 and 27,768,000. The numbers for the same week in 2009 were 29,221,702; 28,361,600 and 29,095,400. Those for 2008 were 30,171,804; 27,736,200 and 29,184,900.
With the Thanksgiving holiday last Thursday shortening the working week, offers and bidding activity moved along a bit more quickly in the early part of the week. A few people reported seeing early interest and buyers were bidding at prices similar to the previous week’s levels.
Slaughter for the week will have been curtailed by the Thanksgiving holiday with the average “guestimated” forecast according to the Urner Barry poll of industry respondents at 566,538. This number is a little over 30,000 more than last year’s actual slaughter for the same period at 536,367, but fairly close to 2008’s slaughter of 570,295. The previous week’s estimated federally inspected slaughter was 676,000. With the exception of cow and bull plants most of the US packing plants did not kill on Saturday.
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