This week’s Slaughter Pig Marketing Summary from Thames Valley Cambac, reported that the factory gremlins continued this week with numerous severe breakdowns and district wide power outages conspiring to make for a challenging week.
As mentioned last week, the supply chain relies on a handful of processing plants, so any disruption at more than one in a trading week brings serious pressures to bear back down the chain. Remedies included Saturday kills but haulage was at a premium, so numerous hundreds were again rolled into this trading week.
Demand remained sluggish for this time of year, but supplies improved a touch again. Slaughter weights also increased indicating better growth rates on farm. Price contributions from the majors stood on however, giving a touch of stability to the market.
The fresh meat market continued to struggle with little upside in demand, and prices generally eased a penny or so. The cull sow market fell 3p on the back of poorer continental demand. European markets were weaker with Germany down 4 eurocents. All quotes in sterling were further eroded by a weaker Euro that ended the week down 0.52p at 87.64p.
The Weaner Marketing Summary, for week commencing October 7, reported that demand remained very poor, with increased feed costs weighing heavily on market sentiment. Supplies of both 7kg weaners and 30kg stores were plentiful, and some batches remained unsold. The prices announced by the AHDB saw the weighted average for a 30kgs pig fall by £5.23 to £46.54 and the weighted average for a 7kg fall by £1.25 to £36.07.
