After months of unchanged prices for market pigs, or just occasional price movements, prices are reported from almost all European markets to have increased to a more or less considerable extent. Germany takes the lead with a six-cent increase, followed by the Netherlands and Belgium with five cents, Austria noticing four cents and Denmark reporting a three-cent increase. This way, Germany makes a considerable jump within the European price structure, yet stays behind Denmark by one cent. The French price as well went up by a respectable eight cents over the past two weeks. But there, the producers are expecting further price increases, so that many batches were postponed to auctions this week. Spain alone has to cope with a 0.5-cent fall in prices. There, the slaughter weights went up quite noticeably, and sufficient quantities are available. This is taken advantage of by the local slaughter companies in order to exert price pressure. Austria's price increase lags behind Germany's a little because there will be one slaughter day fewer this week and next as a result of a national holiday and of All Saint's Day.

Even if at first sight the price increase seems a little unusual for this time of the year, it is well grounded in terms of the market situation. From the pig producers' point of view, it was long overdue. At present, the quantities of pigs mature for slaughter on offer is declining in most of the European countries. At the same time, the pork is swiftly marketed, not only on the export markets but also on the EU internal market.

Trend for the German market

As for the days ahead, registrations of market pigs keep lagging behind the quantities registered so far. Therefore, the market participants expect the positive market situation to continue over the coming week for slaughter.

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)