The average price for EU-spec finished pigs reached the £2/kg “barrier” in late September and remained above this threshold throughout the period, according to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).
In late September, AHDB recorded that the EU-spec all pig price (APP) followed a trend of continued gains set by the EU-spec standard pig price (SPP), increasing to 203.6p per kg. Throughout September, APP increased 0.7% on the previous month.
AHDB said: “While breaching the £2/kg mark will have been a welcome development by producers, they still fall short of the cost of production, which rose to 240p/kg deadweight in Q2 2022.”
Slaughter numbers dropped in September, with clean pig slaughter for the month estimated at 664,800 head, an average of 166,200 per week. The monthly figure is 15,000 head lower than the previous month, mostly the result of very low slaughter numbers in late September, according to AHDB.
Due to the four-day working week of the Queen’s funeral, only 138,500 clean pigs were slaughtered. This was 36,890 fewer than the average weekly kill throughout the rest of September. Year-to-date, 7.10 million pigs have been processed, which is 0.9% down on the same period in 2021.
EU-spec SPP carcase weights have inclined in recent weeks and is recorded to be 1.99kg higher than numbers for the prior month. This figure is in line with carcase weights in June this year. Similarly, AHDB added that the EU-spec APP average carcase weight also recorded an increase of 1.54kg in September.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
