From Russia with Love...
UK - Having just stepped off the plane from a trip to Moscow, apologies for the brevity of this report, but hopefully this will still provide a reasonably accurate summary of today’s trading, says Peter Crichton.Although the euro continues to weaken in the face of the improving value of sterling closing on Friday worth 88.1p compared with 91p two weeks ago, pig prices have continued to harden despite the additional challenges of two short weeks.
DAPP now stands at a new high of 147.38p up by 1.54p compared with the previous week and as a result contract base prices moved up by a similar amount. Those sellers on DAPP plus 5p contracts are now almost level pegging with spot quotes which tended to be in the 153–156p range.
Later in the day one or two shrewd sellers were able to coax a further few pence out of spot buyers still out shopping of up to 160p in certain regions, but this was the exception rather than the rule.
Cull sow quotes were also affected by the weakening of the euro, but in the main sellers with large loads could achieve stand on quotes in the 124p region with smaller loads receiving 2–4p below this, but very few reports of many successful bids below 120p.
The AHDB 30kg ex-farm weaner average continues to improve and now stands at £54.02/head, but as previously reported significant premiums of £3-£5/head available for large lots of weaners, especially north of Watford.