AHDB: Lamb market update
Sheep meat is an incredibly seasonal market, with demand for lamb and mutton being driven by the religious festivals of Ramadan and Easter in the spring when we would normally see prices peak.
We certainly saw this last year, when average lamb deadweight prices reached record-breaking highs of 893 p/kg in May 2024.
However, we have now past Easter and Ramadan this year and have not seen similar price trends. Indeed, the overall GB deadweight SQQ lamb price has been tracking steadily downwards for the past five weeks to stand at 686 p/kg for the week ending 26 April 2025.
The reasons behind this contrast from last year can be attributed to both supply and demand.
On the demand side, this year consumer demand was more protracted as Ramadan occurred from the 28 February to the 31 March, and Easter was on the 20 April, with approximately a month between them, whereas last year Ramadan ran from March 10 to April 8 with Easter coinciding on the 31 March – creating a very condensed demand period which drove up farmgate prices sharply. Strong lamb sales were helped by promotional activity, but also less price-focus among some consumers.
Indeed, Kantar retail performance data for the first quarter of 2025 shows that lamb volumes were down 15% year-on-year (12 weeks to 23 March), as Easter was outside of this period this year.
On the supply side, we have also seen a much higher carry-over of old season lambs this year, which are currently weighing on average prices according to market reports. This could be down to several reasons, namely the fact that last year was largely a difficult year for sheep farming due to the poor weather. This impacted lambing, grass growth and worm burden, likely holding back lambs from sale earlier in 2025.
This influx of older, heavier lambs is evidenced in the GB average carcase weights, which were slightly up in January and February, but were tracking well above the five-year average in March.
Sheep meat trade dynamics may also be having an influence over current GB prices. Import volumes from New Zealand and Australia are up significantly on the year. This may at least be counteracting the effect of the reduced GB clean sheep slaughter that we have seen in the year to date (-3.8% from Jan-March 2024). Meanwhile, export volumes have been relatively flat.
In the future, barring any geopolitical shifts that could see significantly more Southern Hemisphere lamb on the UK market, we would expect lamb prices to settle back down into their standard rhythms and sit within the five-year average. Initial reports indicated that weather conditions have made this year’s lambing season more favourable than last, which should offer some stability domestically moving forward.
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