Even within the northern part of the country, the price varied from KZT 293 in Pavlodar to KZT 375 in Astana. In July 2009, this range remained large, e.g. KZT 604 in Astana and KZT 435 in Kokshetau, even though the two cities are only 300 kilometres apart (FAO, 2010b). Such differences indicate that transactions costs of moving beef between cities were too high to permit profitable arbitrage. Transport costs would also be too high for intermediaries to collect carcasses and take them a few hundred kilometres to a large processing plant.