No Quick Recovery For Game Prices

High supply, low demand and the impact of the drought on income and production costs has resulted in the recent downward trend in the prices for game animals. Denene Erasmus reports.

- Denene Erasmus

According to Absa AgriBusiness’ latest agricultural outlook, game prices are unlikely to recover to 2015-levels within the next three years. Released in Centurion recently, the outlook based its game industry overview and projections on data received from all game auctions in SA from January 2008 to August 2017.

Interest in breeding higher- value game, as well as colour and/or morphological variants, started during the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009.

“Before the crisis, the rand was relatively strong, and thus the game industry endured low profitability,” the outlook stated.

This prompted investment in breeding animals with traits that met the demands of international trophy hunters. As a result, the demand for top genetic game breeding material increased sharply, with prices for most game animals reaching a historic high in 2015.