May 21, 2007

Australian beef sales up in Japan

Following Japan's Golden Week holidays and thereafter, Australian beef made waves among the Japanese whereas beef sales usually go down after the festival.

Australian beef exporters got a good run this week where grassfed fullsets were up by 1 cent by last week to 210 US cents per pound while shortfed fullsets also increased by 3 cents to 238 US cents per pound.

There was, however, little movement in the Japanese wholesale market, except the average price of chilled shortfed chuck roll which fell 30 yen (US$0.24) to 895yen (US$7.38) per kilogramme.

According to retail sales data collected by the Agriculture and Livestock Industries Cooperation of Japan via a point of sale system, Australian beef sales during the Golden week which was held during the first week of May reached 12.3 kilograms (kg) per 1,000 customers - up 6 percent on the previous year. Total beef sales were 17.0kg per 1,000 customers, or 4 percent above the same period last year.