US beef lean trim prices surge on limited supply, strong demand

US prices for 90CL lean beef trim have climbed 9% in the last four months on limited domestic supplies of lean trims and strong demand.

Platts, a part of S&P Global Commodity Insights assessed 90CL beef CIF US at $6,680/mt, or $3.03/lb, on Feb. 19, compared with $6,129/mt, or $2.78/lb, on Oct. 18, 2024.

In the week ended Feb. 1, 115,600 heads of bulls and cows were slaughtered, the US Department of Agriculture said Feb. 13 in its last Cattle Weekly Slaughter report. Slaughtered bulls and cows are the main sources of lean trims.

The last weekly slaughter figure was down 11.1% year on year.

"We are still under the thought process that a more concerted effort to keep beef females will occur in 2025, so we will likely continue to see beef cow harvest rates below year-ago numbers," said Caleb Hurst, market analyst for S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The culling rate of beef cows in 2024 was over 10% of the beef cow inventory as of Jan. 1, 2024, a decline of 2 percentage points from 2023 and the lowest since 2019, the USDA said Feb. 18 in its last Livestock Outlook report.

Constrained domestic supplies and strong demand have supported import volumes and prices.

"US beef imports in December totaled nearly 400 million lb, a 30-percent year-over-year increase," the USDA said in the Livestock Outlook. "Monthly imports from Australia reached over 131 million lb, an increase of nearly 69% over last year and the largest monthly shipment from the country since 2015."

"Exports from Brazil were also higher year over year, though down sharply from November as the product was likely staged in bonded warehouses to be imported on January 1, when the tariff-rate-quota reopened for the 2025 calendar year," the USDA said in the same report.

US beef and veal imports estimates, in carcass-weight equivalent, for the year 2025 were at 4.770 billion lb, up 2.9% from total beef imports in 2024 and up 28.1% from 2023, the USDA showed on its last US red meat forecast report Feb. 18.

Platts is part of S&P Global Commodity Insights.