Weekly pig prices and slaughter data for Great Britain.
After last week’s welcome gain of 1.73p, much of the ground has been lost this week, with the EU-spec SPP falling by 1.36p to stand at 177.34p/kg during the week ended July 25.
This continues a pattern since early May of gains being quickly cancelled out by reductions on a similar scale. The net effect is that the SPP is at exactly the same level as it was in early May and is less than 0.5p ahead of early June. It remains nearly 28p below where it stood a year ago, on the back of an imbalance of supply and demand, compounded by low EU prices.
The latest Tribune roundup of EU prices showed an increase in France, which is currently bucking the trend, but further falls in Spain and Denmark, where the quoted headline price is now well below €1kg. There was little movement elsewhere.
The headline EU-UK price gap continues to widen. The EU reference price (S-grade) fell back by 2p during the week ended July 19 stand at 134.92p/kg, a loss of 5p in the space of three weeks. The gap to the equivalent UK price has grown beyond 50p again, having dropped back below the 40p-mark in the early spring.
The latest Defra update shows June UK clean pig slaughterings were up 4.9% year-on-year, at 889,000 head, with pigmeat production, at 83,000 tonnes, 5.2% higher than in June 2025.
AHDB’s data suggests July slaughterings remain well above year-earlier levels. Estimated GB clean pig slaughterings, at 162,455 head during the week ended July 25, were slightly down on the previous week but more than 14,000 head above the 2025 figure.
Average carcase weights bounced back after losing nearly 1kg the previous week, gaining 0.51kg to stand at 91.13kg in the SPP sample. Carcase weights are still more than 5kg below the recent April peak and in line with year-earlier levels.
The extreme hot weather of recent weeks will have impacted productivity in the short-term and longer-term, with some heavy losses reported on farms during first heatwave, alongside what are likely to be slower growth rates.
London feed wheat futures have dropped back slightly after recent increases, quoted by AHDB on July 29 at £199/t for November and £201/t for January, around £8 down on last week in both cases.