While Southern and Northern Europe show steady to increasing trends, the pig keepers in Central Europe need to accept a severe price slide. The German producers in particular are being stunned by the tremendous 8-cents’ price decrease. Belgium was hit even harder by a corrected 9.8 cents’ price decrease. The pig prices were also pulled down in the Netherlands and in Austria. France registered a price correction slightly more moderate. Since the price remained unchanged in Denmark, the country advanced to rank third among the five EU member countries richest in pigs.

Great Britain is the winner of the week with its notable 4.4 cents’ plus. So, with its corrected 1.731 EUR per kg slaughter weight, the British price succeeds in outpacing even the leading Spanish price level. The quotation in the holiday country that the Germans like most to go to moves sideways, with the prospects being positive as to the price development. The temperatures rising in Spain has a negative bearing on the growth of pigs mature for slaughter. The Spanish market participants expect the quantities of live pigs on offer to be declining in the coming week.

Trend for the German market: The mood continues to be gloomy on the pigs-mature-for-slaughter market after last Friday’s price decreases. The slaughter companies’ activity still is restrained at the beginning of the week, so the extensive quantities of live pigs on offer are not completely placed currently. The situation is made even more difficult through the wet and cold weather conditions. The producers, however, are not seen to do panic selling, so no pressure arises from that side. It’s easing news that now that Russia lifted the bans imposed on pork exports, Taiwan and Belarus follow suit. Yet, the market situation seems to be unpredictable and only difficult to assess at the time being.

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)