Dear readers,
Is the beginning of the first working week, still not much happening in our industry. Let’s open with a couple of good news:
- Canada-headquartered Premium Brands Holdings has paid US$66m for two meat-products companies in the US and one in Canada in a mix of US$50m in cash, US$10m in shares and a further “contingent consideration” of US$6m.NSP Quality Meats manufactures cooked protein and deli meats, operating facilities in the US states of Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri. Casa Di Bertacchi produces branded and private-label cooked protein products with a facility in New Jersey. Italia Salami specializes in making “authentic” dry-cured Italian salami and runs a plant in Ontario, Canada.
- The dispute between the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Health and the Tönnies slaughterhouse over the temporary closure of the main site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück due to a corona outbreak has been resolved. Both parties agree on a settlement. This ends all legal disputes. The state will deposit 3.2 million euros into a blocked account, from where the money will be distributed to social projects in the East Westphalia area. The state will also reimburse 108,000 euros in legal costs. In return, Tönnies will cease all legal proceedings against the state, the cities of Rheda-Wiedenbrück and Gütersloh and the district of Gütersloh. The company will also no longer file claims for damages. In total, this concerns more than 1,000 lawsuits.
Events calendar:
- The HOGA trade fair, established in 1950 and named after the acronym for „Hotel und Gaststätte” (Hotel and Restaurant), serves as a pivotal platform for professionals in the hospitality, gastronomy, and community catering sectors. Held biennially at the Nuremberg Exhibition Center, HOGA will take place on 3 days from Sunday, 12. January to Tuesday, 14. January 2025
Wind of Change
The European pig industry is restarting after 2 weeks with very few working days.
Holiday season in the east of Europe has usually has seen a lot of Spanish pork offers in the years before, but the last 2 weeks posed a challenging logistic situation, it was hard to impossible to find drivers to resupply this markets. This resulted in some frozen pork stocks in Spain.
In Germany, the reduced number of working days caused an accumulation of pigs in the barns, the effect will be seen most probably on the Wednesday pig quotation: a reduction of 7-12 cents its expected.
Even more challenging, in the near future, is the outcome of the German elections: will the “greens” completely disappear from the political landscape? Is a coalition without extremist parties possible?
In two weeks we will see Trump invested as president of the U.S. It can affect the pig/pork trade map of the world. Will the trade war with China continue and cause also the a disruption of the pork exports to China? Will the immigrant policy affect the cost of production by increasing it to a level that makes European pork again competitive?
Latest issue: Austria is also facing a political crisis, the Chancellor says he will resign in the coming days, both as chancellor and party leader, after talks about forming a coalition government without the far right party collapsed.
In Romania, in an unprecedented move, the Constitutional Court canceled the presidential elections. One of the candidates entering the second tour was also considered to represent the far right…
Where will get us the wind of change?
