Dear readers,
Before the winter holidays we are still getting good prices for the market hogs. Let’ s see other good news also:
- New Mexico State University (NMSU) added a new Food Science, Security and Safety Center and the animal Nutrition and Feed Manufacturing Facility to its College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) program as part of a $43 million funding infusion.
- In a draft decree, the Polish Ministry of Agriculture intends to ban the naming of plant-based meat alternatives with words too similar to meat products, such as “burger,” “sausage,” “steak,” “ham” and “escalope”, after being pressed by national farming organizations.
- The Compaxo Group is taking over the slaughtering operations of the Pali group in the Netherlands. Both companies are family businesses, with more than 1000 employees each.
- In Spain the Italy based Pini Group, who also operates the largest pig abattoir in Europe, sold its sow slaughterhouse to Costa Food Group.
DJ Play a Christmas Song
It looks like we will close an unprecedented year in terms of pig prices in Europe. It is the highest level in the history of the modern pig industry, but price comes with a cost.
The most common negative comment of this year is regarding loosing competitiveness on the Asian markets.
On one hand, this is determined by the fast recovery of the Chinese pig herd after the devastating African swine fever episode. But is this over? In the last two years we have lost almost any independent news resource from the local market, we have to rely on state controlled media. We can also estimate from the evolution of ASF in the region: Hong Kong authorities have ordered the culling of more than 900 pigs after finding the disease on a farm in the New Territories district.
Than there is also the issue of competitive prices. Even with the above mentioned control on the medias, we get more and more news on the huge loss bared by the Chinese pig industry. The USA pork export is also making good volumes in China, but the American farmers are losing money on their pigs.
In Europe pig numbers are going down. Recent data from Belgium shows a reduction of the slaughtering volumes with 14% compared with 2022 and 23% compared to 2021.
Less pigs means less efficiency of the slaughterhouses, also confronted with a work force crisis. The solution lays in the way also some of the biggest players react: consolidation.
My dear readers, this is the last full working week of this year. Until the second week of January 2024, the low number of working days provide few opportunities to deliver pigs to the slaughterhouses, we will probably also see some reduction of the market hog price on the East European markets, where backyard pig slaughtering will also peak.
Lets ask the DJ to play a Christmas song!
European pig and piglet prices: HW= Hot weight; L= live weight;
| COUNTRY | PIG(EUR) | TREND | PIGLET(EUR) | TREND | OBSERVATION |
| GERMANY | 2,1 HW |  | 73/25 kg | | |
| NETHERLANDS | 1,98-2,12 HW | | 67/25 kg | | |
| BELGIUM | 1,52 L | | 65/20 kg |  | |
| DANEMARK | 1,73 HW |  | 80/30 kg | | |
| FRANCE | 1,78 HW | | |||
| ITALY | 1,9 L115kg, 2,24 L160kg, DOC | | 116/30 kg | | |
| SPAIN | 1,64 -1,65 L | | 73-82/20kg | | |
| PORTUGAL | 2,3 HW | | |||
| AUSTRIA | 2,07 HW | | 94/31 kg | | |
| POLAND | 1,48-1,90 L | | 79-120/20-30 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| CROATIA | 2,0-2,2 HW | | 97-102 / 25 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| SERBIA | 2,3 L | | 105-117/ 25 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| CZECH R. | 2,1 HW | | 69-74/ 25 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| SLOVAKIA | 1,85 -1,9 L | | 92-97/25 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| HUNGARY | 1,89 – 2 L | | 92-97/ 25 kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
| ROMANIA | 1,9 – 2,1 L | | 92-97/25kg | | Partner info; no quotation |
