The UK backlog of pigs needs to cleared quickly ahead of the looming festive period, according to Thames Valley Cambac.
In its weekly update, TVC said the market remained largely unchanged last week, with processors killing as many pigs as possible, which is generally being governed by capacity within their butchery facilities,
“Saturday kills are being undertaken by some to catch up on lost kill to service increasing retailer demand, although this is being played down, coupled to the fact that demand from China is growing at a not insignificant pace,” it said.
“These flames have been fanned by Germany having to instantly stop shipping East as a consequence of the ASF lockdown, which has provided a huge platform for the rest of the EU including the UK to climb on to.”
“However, the grey cloud is the amount of German product currently not finding a home and reports of pigs now backing up on farms as processors struggle to clear normal kills.”
TVC stressed that the backlog of pigs in the UK as a consequence of plant reliability needs to be cleared within the next three or four weeks as the supply base has ‘one eye’ on the fact there are only 11 full killing weeks left before the short weeks of the festive period.
With Christmas falling awkward for the meat processing sector this year, raising the prospect of only a 50% kill at best during the Christmas week and 70% New Year week, the industry will need to be clearing something in the region of circa 12,000k to 15,000 extra pigs per week from three weeks’ time, it added.
Sows stood on, but there is a growing concern as manufacturers across the EU are ‘imagining a bell wave of product being available shortly as a result of the German issues on clean pigs’, TVC warned.
The Euro ended the week at 90.67p down from the previous week’s close of 91.34p.
Weaner and store prices remained similar, although the potential to move spot batches was hindered again by the log-jam with many slaughter pig movements.
European Prices (p/kg.dwt) w/c 04/10/20 Movement on last week
European Av. 129.29 -1.41
Belgium 100.08 – 3.11
Denmark 125.41 – 0.93
France 149.28 – 1.87
Germany 115.15 – 0.85
Ireland 145.98 – 1.08
Holland 119.30 – 0.88
Spain 152.60 – 1.13
(Ref Weekly Tribune)