After German producers had hoped for prices to increase last week as a result of low quantities of pigs mature for slaughter being on offer, they now have to settle for an unchanged quotation. In view of the poor margin with meat sales and of vociferous complaints from the slaughter companies, no price increases could be put through. This was followed suit by the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria.

The quotations in France, Denmark, Great Britain and Sweden tended downwards. Resulting from that, the corrected quotations reported on from Germany, the Netherlands and France have come to be on almost the same level. That means that France was not able to maintain the previous week’s price gap. Spain as well suffered from the northern European slaughter companies’ pressure. The Spanish slaughter companies therefore reduced their activities. Relief is brought about for the producers by the holiday season and by a flourishing export business which result in a moderate price increase.

Trend: With the numbers of live pigs on offer remaining low, the prices are expected to remain steady at least. If the weather improves as announced, the meat business might be given the stimulus needed and make the prices increase. Besides, the first holiday-makers are returning to Germany, stimulating the domestic meat consumption.

Explanation
¹corrected quotation: The official Quotations of the different countries are corrected, so that each quotation has the same base (conditions).
base: 56 per cent lean-meat-percentage; farm-gate-price; 79 per cent killing-out-percentage, without value-added-tax (VAT)