It’s been a year to forget for the EU’s pork sector, according to international farming body Copa-Cogeca, who described the market as being in a “crisis”.
An AHDB Pork report into the EU’s beleaguered pork sector shows a faint sign of improvement, thanks to the implementation of Private Storage Aid (PSA) - which comes into effect on Monday 4 January.
The return of PSA is being hailed as welcome news for Europe’s pig market given that prices have fallen significantly over the past few months, culminating in them hitting the lowest level in over a decade in Europe. Pork normally performs poorly after the New Year and price falls are expected in January and February, according to AHDB Pork.
Despite dropping prices, there are already signs of encouragement in Germany and other northerly EU states, as the market has started to stabilise thanks, in part, to festive demand for pork products, however this growth is unlikely to shoulder the burden of EU’s overall pork sector.
Pork production in 2025 is projected to be less than 2% higher than it was in 2015, around 23.8m tonnes (t), according to the EU Commission’s newly published Medium-term Outlook on pork.