SURPRISINGLY high beef exports and slaughter figures coupled with ongoing strong cattle prices show little sign of abating as winter looms.
Many industry analysts, including Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), pegged beef exports and slaughter to be much tighter in 2015, but that's not what has transpired in the first quarter of this year.
Indicative eastern states adult cattle slaughter for the first quarter of 2015 was two per cent higher than the same period last year.
Likewise, weekly National Livestock Reporting Service eastern states slaughter figures zoomed higher in March, averaging a little more than 172,000 head which was buoyed about 3pc week-on-week.
That's even with Easter thrown into the mix creating two short processing weeks.
With all this evidence of higher cattle slaughter, on Monday MLA market information manager Ben Thomas revised up the cattle industry projections for 2015.
Mr Thomas now pegs the annual cattle slaughter at 8.2 million head.
"While this is still 11pc below last year's three-decade high cattle kill, it will make the rare sequence of three consecutive years with greater than eight million cattle killed," Mr Thomas said.
He now suggests kill figures will remain high in the second quarter, but will decline as the year progresses, providing the north gets a good wet season towards the end of 2015.
The domino effect of surging slaughter has also been felt in the production and export numbers.
Although Australian Bureau of Statistics figures are a few months behind releasing data, the numbers do show that during February beef production increased year-on-year by 6pc (to 216,821 tonnes carcase weight).
This was the 29th consecutive month production had increased year-on-year.
Mr Thomas said the anticipated large number of cattle on feed would in part offset the proportion of store cattle slaughtered, which was likely to be particularly relevant for northern Australia.
Beef and veal exports for the first quarter of 2015 finished 8pc above last year's high level, at 297,055t (shipped weight) according to Department of Agriculture figures.
Last month's shipment were particularly buoyant due to renewed interest from the US.
In total 123,464t were exported in March (up 16pc on the same period last year), while the US took 42,028t (40pc more than March 2014).
Mr Thomas said the US would remain Australia's largest beef destination this year, and the market was forecast to remain buoyant.
But, he said, should exports continue at this pace all year, it would put pressure on the annual tariff free quota of 418,214t (although the quota is based on import volumes, which at March 30 were just 73,270t).
"Beef imported from Australia to the US out of quota attracts a tariff of 21.12pc in 2015," he said.
Adding to the export shift in the first quarter was reinvigorated demand from Japan.
A combination of the lower Australian dollar, tight supply from the US, gradual economic recovery and renewed interest for Australian beef as a result of the Japan Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA) have contributed to the improvement.
All up, Japan took 67,887t in the first quarter, up 13pc from the corresponding period in 2014 and MLA reported this was also the highest quarterly total since 2011.
Furthermore, MLA suggests that with proportionally higher beef exports, product on the domestic market has become stretched and may be reflected in higher retail prices during the coming months.