Australia seeing soaring beef price

Increasing international demand for Australian beef driven by the U.S. has seen local prices spiral by up to 50 percent in the past six months.

Butchers and major supermarket retailers believe some prized steak cuts such as rib eye may not be available to Australian consumers.

They are simply becoming too expensive, with cheaper cuts such as chuck steak and consumers choosing chicken and pork instead becoming the new normal.

The U.S. is seen as the prime factor in this market change as its beef industry is in a downturn, and the lower Australian dollar is also making local beef cheaper on the international market.

A spokesman for supermarket giant Coles confirmed the trend to Fairfax Media.

"For some beef products in our supermarket, we have needed to increase prices to reflect the higher cost," he said.

Discount supermarket chain Aldi also said rising prices were making it challenging to find cheaper cuts of beef.

"However, what we may see is consumers trying new cuts of meat like chicken or pork," a spokesman said.

Some retailers are understood to be increasing the minimum portion of popular cheaper products like mince or lower quality sausages to support sales volume.

Individual butchers who do not have the volume-purchasing power of the supermarket giants were also reported to be struggling to offer customer affordable prime cuts of beef, and thus increasingly unable to sell what they had on offer. Endi