Latest Costings Show Secrets of Cattle Finishing Success
24/09/05

The most successful specialist English beef producers are producing stock at a total cost of less than £1/day and little more than 80p/kg liveweight gain to deliver net margins fully £110/head higher than the average, reveal the latest annual enterprise costings results from the English Beef and Lamb Executive (EBLEX).

Enterprise costing results from nearly 40 specialist beef finishing businesses across the country show top third margin earners finishing their animals at an almost identical carcase weight to the average and achieving very similar per kilogram deadweight prices in 2004/5.

The top third producers, however, bought younger animals and finished them over a longer period and at higher daily liveweight gains. Despite this, their overall concentrate use, total feed costs and variable costs were noticeably lower than the average and dramatically lower than the bottom third. Even more interestingly their fixed costs were also lower.

As a result they produced stock for a total cost of just 99p/day and 82p/kg liveweight gain, compared with the 136p/day and 105p/kg gain achieved by the average and 175p/day and 131p/kg gain by the bottom third.

Although they paid more per kilogram liveweight for their stock at the outset, the key to the higher margins made by the better producers clearly lay in buying animals with a greater potential for adding value - both through better quality and a greater opportunity for putting on weight - then exploiting this potential at the least cost per day and kilo.

Their higher production efficiency was achieved through a combination of lower fixed as well as variable costs and better growth rates, setting valuable benchmarks for industry-wide improvement efforts in the post-subsidy world.

EBLEX English Intensive Beef Finisher Enterprise Costings 2004/5

* Excludes the value of unpaid family labour