Valorising the Fifth Quarter in a Circular Economy: By-Product Value, Margins and Producer Share in the South African Beef Value Chain

South African beef producers face a cost-price squeeze: between 2021 and 2024 the real weaner price fell by 30%, almost twice the decline in the real carcass price. Circular economy strategies that recover value from the fifth quarter, the non-carcass portion of a slaughtered animal, offer a route to producer resilience. We reconstructed the retail value of a representative 280 kg A2/A3 carcass from a block test applied to 1284 retail prices surveyed in 36 towns (November–December 2023) and aligned it with weaner and abattoir prices for the same period. On a whole-animal basis, producers received 31.5% of consumer expenditure, against 69.1% under the conventional per-kilogram carcass-weight-equivalent spread; the difference reflects feedlot weight gain. An indicative valuation from published abattoir, hide and offal-export prices suggests that the fifth quarter adds about 5% to the value of the animal, of the same order as the margin of the feedlot or abattoir that realises it after producers have sold the animal; if captured, it would raise producers’ weaner revenue by about 16%. Retained ownership through slaughter, cooperative or communal processing and transparent by-product credits emerge as strategies for producers to share in this value and strengthen their resilience to the cost-price squeeze.