Tom Hogan called on processors to reflect the major improvements in pigmeat trade with increased producer prices this week.

Hogan stated:

A number of factors provide justification for a significant price increase, including a stronger export trade with Asian and the important Chinese market in particular - picking up over recent weeks, tightening supplies of pigs across the EU, and a steady demand for Irish product on the domestic market.

While quotes have remained relatively static at the €1.40c/kg-€1.42c/kg level for the past number of weeks, many exporting European pig producing countries, such as Germany and Denmark, have experienced up to a 16c/kg improvement in pig prices in the past two weeks.

Hogan warned all pig processors that without increasing the pig price as a matter of urgency, confidence levels will continue to descend, mirroring their firmly in-the-red bank balances, and that the gains in both productivity and scale at farm-level made over the past five years will be lost.

He called on all pig processors to increase prices paid to well in excess of the €1.50c/kg conservative estimate of the cost of production as soon as possible so that businesses will at least stop making a loss.

At today’s pig price of €1.40c/kg, every pig that leaves a pig farm is leaving a loss of up to €10/pig. This situation is completely unsustainable and needs to be rectified if Ireland’s third-largest commodity sector, with exports of €714 million in 2017, is to survive and prosper.

As reported by the Irish Farmers Association