Steady is how the European slaughter pig market presents itself this week. The mood continues to be friendly; noticeable price increases have stayed away. Slight upward price corrections were reported with regard to Belgian and Spanish quotations.
The majority of quotations, however, have stayed the same. Due to the short week of slaughter resulting from the public holiday celebrated in many countries on 1 May, optimism remains cautious.
Despite "unfulfilled" expectations as to last weekend’s weather conditions, the Austrian quotation still exceeds the previous year’s price level, as states the VLV. The Spanish quotation, too, is above last year’s level.
Having nothing at hand to oppose the public holiday, the average weather conditions and the slightly increased slaughter weights, the French pig keepers have to cope with a corrected 2.7 cent’s price decrease.
A sign given from Germany would be helpful to Europe where last week’s quotations were only "unchanged", much to market participants’ disappointment.
Meanwhile, suspicion arose at Danish Crown's Herning site last Wednesday that a case of classical swine fever had been detected. Yet, this fortunately was not confirmed, and so the Danish (as well as all of Europe) have good reason to be relieved.
Trend for the German market: At the beginning of the new week of slaughter, the mood is exceptionally optimistic on the German slaughter pig market. The marketers have quite a task at hand in covering the slaughter companies’ demand for live pigs providing the desired quantities.
No backlog supply resulted from the public holidays. According to reports, the situation is not expected to change with regard to scarce quantities on offer before the weekend. So, from today’s point of view, prices are expected to go up substantially.
