A shut down of restaurants in key export market North America has led to a drop in goatmeat prices of as much as $1 a kilogram carcaseweight to $1.50/kg in the past week.
Thomas Foods International livestock manager Paul Leonard said they were offering $10.50/kg before Easter, with this back to $9/kg from Tuesday due to a "real lack of demand globally".
He said with 80 per cent of the nation's goatmeat heading into North America's food service industry, demand had dropped away.
"It's very hard to even get a reasonable bid on containers of goat meat and there are indications it could be at least six months before they'll be looking to want to buy any more," he said.
He said there was already a considerable inventory of frozen goat meat in this market to work through.
Mr Leonard said the supply of goats was at historically low levels, on the back of the drought interrupting breeding cycles, while high prices had led to a "clean out" of numbers.
"Combined with the great break in the season and low currency, in a normal sequence of events, we'd have expected goat prices to have held or or even climbed," he said. "But we've seen two to three major processors drop prices by $1/kg and depots by 70 cents/kg liveweight, which is a $20-$25 correction in a couple of days."
He said while it was expected to even out, this might be a good time to start rebuilding the historically low numbers for those able.
At this stage TFI's Lobethal facility is still putting through its regular numbers.
RELATED READING: Growing export demand for Aussie goats
Goat depot owner Stephen Obst, Truro, said the pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic had started to squeeze the goat industry in the past week, with goats movement through the depot slowly slightly.
He said there were still good signs, with this drop in price coming off a record high price.
"It is still $9/kg, which is magnificent money," he said.
"The goat industry is still very good, we're just seeing a little glitch."
He said as winter approached, the numbers harvested would likely drop further.
Australia remains the largest exporter of goatmeat, despite accounting for less than 1pc of global production.
While North America is the largest market, product also goes to Taiwan, South Korea, China and Trinidad, with positive signals from these markets after some slowing.
The value of Australian goatmeat exports totalled $235.7 million in 2019 - up 29pc on the year prior, supported by increased prices.
According to Meat & Livestock Australia's latest goatmeat global snapshot, goat prices peaked at $9.40/kgcwt in late June and averaged $7.90/kg across 2019.
These high prices continue to impact live exports to the price-sensitive Malaysian market - Australia's largest destination for live goats.
MLA reported strong domestic goat prices had resulted in a marked decrease in total live goat exports in the past few years, with exports down to 16,000 head in 2019 - a decrease of 82pc from 2015 levels (87,700hd).
- Start the day with all the big news in agriculture. Click here to sign up to receive our daily Stock Journal newsletter.
