Have you noticed how the price of lamb has gone through the roof lately? Apart from the meat we produce on the farm, I choose to buy my meat from a butcher than the supermarket because the quality is usually far superior. Having said that, I was caught out after hours last week and needed to buy some meat from Woollies… and I nearly fell over my trolley to see that a small tray of cutlets was over $40 per kilo and even roasts were nearly $20 per kilo.
If you’ve been wondering why lamb has become so expensive, it’s because Australia’s export market for lamb is booming. Some export markets have been growing 28% year on year, and Australian farmers simply can’t produce enough of our quality produce to keep up. So Australians too are feeling the brunt of that – with lamb sale prices hitting record highs this year of $6 per kilo – this is the car case weight only so doesn’t include the cost of butchering and packing (which we pay $1-50 per kilo for) or any retail mark up. So for a 50kg lamb (which ours easily are due to the focus of Dorpers on meat production) the raw cost (without any mark up at all) is currently up to $450 per lamb.
I’m not sure what the markup would be for Woollies or even a butcher, but assuming it’s at least 20% that puts the cost of lamb with all it’s butchering at over $500. Wow! That’s a heap. But it’s good news for Aussie farmers like us who are bringing herds into commercial production. And for our own farm fresh meat customers it’s good news too – because we charge only $140 for half a lamb or $250 for a whole lamb, butchered and packed ready for pickup in Sydney.
If you’d like to order lamb from us, simply drop me a line and I’ll send you an order form.
