The trend is downward almost everywhere, level at best. The situation continues to be paradoxical, with the markets being balanced for live pigs and the prices yet being under pressure.

On the one hand this may be explained by the weak meat business as well as by sales from the cold stores. On the other hand, disproportionate pressure caused by discount prices is said to be a reason.

For the second week in a row, the leading German slaughter companies are not content with the producer associations’ price recommendation which has gone down by one cent compared to the previous week. Last week’s quotations were maintained in the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria.

The pig market is getting under increasing pressure in Spain. There, decreasing demand is distressing the market at the end of the holiday season.

With the slaughter weights going down again it shows that the Spanish are not yet subject to supply pressure. As per Spanish analysts, the latest one-cent price decrease rather must be seen as the result of the expanding price gap towards Germany.

A scandal was witnessed in France last week. Both on Monday and Tuesday, the auction giving the French pilot price had to be stopped. Two to three major customers had cancelled participation, because, as they said, manipulated prices had been shown there for weeks.

Trend for the German market

The situation hasn’t changed in comparison to last week. The quantities of pigs for slaughter on offer are manageable. They are just large enough to satisfy the slaughter companies’ demand.

Quite unlike the large slaughter concerns, the medium-sized businesses do not pay discount prices. From today’s point of view, the quotation decrease would not be in line with the market.