The quantities of pigs mature for slaughter on offer are not quite sufficient to fully make up for covering the good demand on the part of the slaughter companies. The quotations are recovering from the disastrous price levels they were on over the past weeks, although cost-covering production still seems to be impossible in pig keeping. Reporting a 9 cents’ price increase, Germany and Austria were best. This way, Germany made it up to the midfield again of the ranking. Now Germany ranks just behind Denmark which is in the third place within the price structure among the five EU member countries richest in pigs. The Dutch that normally follow suit to Germany’s development, reported an 8 cents’ increase, thus ranking last now.

Moderate price increases were listed in Spain, France, Denmark, Belgium and Great Britain. Spain was able to further expand its lead in the European price structure by achieving a price level of a corrected EUR 1.556 per kg slaughter weight. The market is also borne by the good prospects with regard to pork exports. According to AMI estimations, the volume of exports might already have exceeded 2.6 million tons in 2010. Alarming reports are coming in from Great Britain: British pig keepers suffered a loss of as much as almost a third of their income last year. Compared internationally, they score very badly in production. An advertising campaign now launched by the branch association is intended to encourage the consumers to go back to regional products again.

Trend for Germany: The good demand on the part of the slaughter companies is expected to be lasting this week. The atmosphere continues to be friendly on the market, and prices are anticipated to go up moderately.

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; farm-gate-price; 79 per cent killing out percentage, without value-added-tax (VAT)