DCA Scholarship price is fixed on uninitiated pig market

Last week the tendency of the market was that the meat market was the limiting factor for the DCA Stock Price 2.0 to set aside an increase. There has also been no improvement in the past week, given the fact that the prices of hams, bellies and backs in the Netherlands remain unchanged. Somewhere the market is grinding against an increase, but the traffic light is not yet green to get the pig prices going. 

The quotations in Northwest Europe are having trouble finding the first meters. Pig prices in Europe seem to be looking at each other, but no one is taking the initiative to increase. The Nord/West commission in Germany has been quiet for a few weeks and is probably shocked by the response that German slaughterhouses gave at the end of January by not going along with the 5 cent increase. Given that Tönnies, the leader in the peloton, is struggling with sales problems and that slows things down, the rest does not move either.

The internet exchange gained 2 cents in the past week, spread over two trading days, and closed on Friday at 1,59 euros. Usually the bandwidth between the internet exchange and the German pig price is about 5 cents, so when the internet exchange breaks through the 1,60 euro kilo mark on Tuesday, there is a gap of 8 cents and this must be a signal for the Nordwest committee to consider an increase. Given that German abattoirs can easily meet their delivery obligations in mid-February and take away the leftover meat in cold stores, the sales side does not have a strong weapon to force the abattoirs to go up. In other words: if the German pig price can go up on Wednesday, that will probably be a small step.

Incidentally, the extra stock is probably not bad for the meat companies, given the figures that confirm that stocks in German cold stores have plummeted in 2016. On balance, the utilization rate of pork in German cold stores shrank between 3 and 12 percent, depending on the company. It is informed from the market that export slaughterhouse Gosschalk will switch to cattle slaughtering exclusively from the second week of March, due to the phosphate production plan that ensures a rapid influx of sausage cows. The pigs that otherwise go to Gosschalk are then taken over by Compaxo, which expands the slaughter capacity for this purpose.  

In the Netherlands, almost all parties in the market are reluctant to stimulate the Germans by breaking the silence. That is why the DCA Stock Price 2.0 remains at 1,48 euros. The live pigs also traded unchanged at 1,17 euros.

The slaughter figures for week 7 note, with 297.000 slaughters, exactly the same number as the same week last year. The weights write a small minus for the second week and record an average of 95,94 kilos. In Germany, the slaughter figure is 984.511 pigs that weighed an average of 97,45 kilos. This is 0,15 percent below last year's level, so the differences in Germany are suddenly small again compared to last year. In the first weeks of this year, the slaughter figures were mainly behind last year.