“The big chicken producers just can’t seem to get rid of that breast meat at the moment,” the wholesaler said. While there is a cost involved in boxing-up, cryovac bagging and cold storage, stockpiling the ‘unbelievably cheap’ chicken fillets for later sale made strong business sense, for those who could do it. One wholesaler has apparently frozen-down ‘several hundred tonnes’ of fillets, to market later in the year. He said large volumes of the super-cheap fresh fillets were now being bought and frozen, for later use. We haven’t seen prices that low at retail in 15 years,” he said. “But it’s a field day for butchers, who are putting them on as specials at just $6.99 to $7.99/kg. Butchers retailing chicken fillets at 15-year lows “They are throwing fillets at us,” he said. One of Australia’s largest meat wholesalers, with exposure to all red and white meat proteins across Eastern Australia, told Beef Central this morning his business had recently bought large volumes of fresh skinless chicken fillet at just $3.60 to $4.20/kg, wholesale. One popular notion is that because of the big shift being seen from battery to free-range hens in egg production, there has been a shift among some former egg producers into chicken meat production. Historically, the price of chicken breast at retail in recent years has been anywhere from $11 to $14/kg.īecause of the closely controlled nature of the meat chicken industry in Australia, it is surprising, to say the least, to see such volatility in chicken prices.Ī number of theories have been put forward as to what’s behind it. It’s meant that chicken is now the dominant item in retail specials across eastern Australia, with prominent independent retailers in the Sydney and Melbourne markets now offering skinless breast fillets to customers at $6-$7/kg. Those same items back in February were worth at least $7/kg, and closer to $8/kg in the trade. The most popular chicken items like fresh skinless breast fillets have collapsed in price over the past month, now selling in places below $4/kg wholesale, Beef Central has been told.
A DRAMATIC fall in wholesale chicken meat prices is creating a serious competitive challenge for higher-priced beef and lamb centre-of-plate meal options in the domestic retail market.
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