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After two weeks of repetitions of the Spanish prices and with the echoes of the last two German price rises (+2 and +6 euro cents per kg of carcass in the last two sessions) it seems clear that the current price cannot fall. We started year 2013 at 1.303 euros / kg LW, and everything points to a price of 1.290 euros / kg LW at the end of the year... Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
We are walking on home ground, and now the ground will not collapse. What the producers longed for has already happened: we have reached the bottom and we can only bounce back. Not yet, not yet, but the price should bounce back.
The price in France is abnormally low. Italy seems to experience the syndrome of the lack of pigs. Belgium and The Netherlands follow, mimetically, the steps of Germany. Denmark accommodates from its privileged position as a champion in terms of exports, and everyone (absolutely everyone) looks towards eastern Europe, looking forward for their seasonal consumption to be as usual (this is, intense).
The winter cold (sharp and hard) is delaying the finishing of the animals, and at the same time it is 'doping' the home consumption in the European continent and the Iberian peninsula. There seems to be a good demand of some of the best cuts (loins, hams, etc.), Christmas is already making itself noticed and the sales are not jamming. There are important stocks, but there is a demand (although measured) for everything.
As we have mentioned so many times before, globalization is a fact, and regional and national peculiarities are progressively less important. The interdependence of the markets is growing, and things will go on like that. There will be no exceptions, not even those that would prove the rule.
The intense slaughtering activity in November has clarified the supply, and the cold could stop things enough so the Christmas holidays may be overcome without building up delays. Maybe the moment has come in which a quid pro quo situation would be welcomed by all… until circumstances change.
In the Spanish collection of proverbs we have the following saying: "Dumbs talk about the past, wise men about the present and fools about the future.”
Guillem Burset
