Store cattle sales in Grafton in February and March each topped more than $1.5 million. Clarence Valley Council works and civil director, Troy Anderson, said there had been impressive figures through the saleyards since an upturn in the beef industry in early 2015. “Since then there have been 63,475 head of cattle sold through the Grafton saleyards,” he said. “Over this same period there have been 1918 different vendors from large producers to hobby farmers and 914 different buyers.” Clarence Valley Mayor, Richie Williamson, said the February and March store sales had figures of $1.55 million and $1.607 million respectively. “The 63,000 plus head of cattle sold through the centre since early last year injected more than $53 million into the regional economy,” he said. “That equates to an average of $862,000 a week. “The recent Clarence Valley Economic Monitor showed more than 13% growth in the gross regional product of the Clarence in 2014/15, and much of that was attributed to growth in the value of agriculture. “The continued strong performance of the beef industry will feed into that nicely.”