With the German quotation naming unchanged prices last Wednesday, the majority of the leading neighbouring countries followed this trend.

Slight price increases were seen in France and Spain again. The Dutch retailers’ exchange proves to be the spike within the European environment, reducing the price by 2 cents.

The southern European countries thus remain the front runners in the European price structure. With their corrected €1.75 price level, the Spanish are still heading the list, followed by Italy and France.

Supply and demand are reported to be well balanced almost everywhere, with surplus demand observed in some places. Supply is extremely short in Austria.

Decreasing slaughter weights are clearly reported from Spain. As a result of the hot summer temperatures of up to 40°C, the daily growth of fattening pigs is going down considerably.

Consequently, some Catalan slaughter companies need to reduce their days of slaughter.

In large areas of Europe, the summer holidays made pork sales go down. At the same time, consumption is going up in the holiday regions. The southern European markets might profit most from this shifting of consumption. This may well be recognised from the European ranking.

Trend for the German market:

Even if some farmers had registered a few more pigs at the end of last week after unchanged price quotations, the quantities of pigs could be sold completely by the marketers since that time. At the beginning of this week, the quantities on offer got back to normal again, with marketing running without problems. For that reason, the market participants are expecting the price level to remain steady for the week of slaughter ahead.