Year after year, the industry gears up for Christmas. Across the borders, the slaughter belts are still running at full capacity. Demand for live pigs is continuing. Business is going well on the domestic and export markets as is reported from the market. Nonetheless, the quotations remain mostly unchanged because the quantities of live pigs on offer generally are sufficient to cover the demand. According to the VLV, Austria is recording high slaughter weights, exceeding 99 kg and producing feedstock in plentiful quantities. Most recently, the slaughter weights were observed to go down in Germany, just as did the numbers of slaughters.

Positive impulse came from Denmark and France last week. From there, increasing quotations were reported for the new week of slaughter. The corrected Danish quotation went up by as much as 2 cents, now being 1.31 euros per kg. With the majority of quotations having stagnated for weeks now – for eight weeks’ time in Germany – the Danish quotation, from a strongly export-oriented nation, was able to go up for the second time within a four-week period. Thus, the Danes were able to squeeze out Germany from rank three in the European price structure of the five EU member countries most important in pig-keeping.

As was commented by a French market participant, the French quotation went up slightly (+1 cent) for political reasons. Some of the slaughter companies were rather worrying about imminent protests and blockades to be undertaken by the farmers. With the market being sufficiently supplied in Great Britain, the British quotation went down slightly.

_{(Source: ISN - Interessengemeinschaft der Schweinehalter Deutschlands)
1) corrected quotation: The official Quotations of the different countries are corrected, so that each quotation has the same base (conditions).
2) These quotations are based on the correction formulas applied since 01.08.2010.
base: 57 % lean-meat-percentage; farm-gate-price; 79 % killing-out-percentage, without value-added-tax}

Trend for the German market

At the beginning of the week, the price-determining factors remained unchanged. The lot sizes continue to be quite extensive, remaining balanced with the great demand. So, the prices are expected to remain steady.