"The pig sector closes 2022 as the most complicated year in history, especially due to the increase in the cost of raw materials, which have skyrocketed, and some products have even doubled their price." This is the balance of the president of the Famadesa meat industry, Federico Beltrán, awarded as the best pork price analyst and winner of the PronosPorc for fattening pig gold awarded by Mercolleida.
The average price of fattened pig has reached 1,515 euros per live kilo in 2022. According to the market, "it is the highest average in history" discounting inflation.
Like 2020 due to the covid and 2021 due to the pandemic plus African swine fever in Germany and the drop in Chinese imports, 2022 has also been atypical in its price curve. This time, the war in Ukraine and the increase in costs that it has caused have been added to the previous problems.
The animal census continues to rise in Spain, although growth has slowed down, mainly due to health problems. Spain is the world's third largest pig herd, after China and the United States, and the second largest exporter after the United States.
In 2023, the general director of Mercolleida, Miquel Bergés, considers that the key factor will also be the cost of production: "If it loosens up for the farmer, feed, feed and cereal, it will give the slaughterhouse a little oxygen and maintain competitiveness to export. Everything depends a lot on exports, which is half of what we produce”.
"The pig -he says- comes from some good years, simply thanks to the international situation, the export boom to China that has already fallen in the last two years".
Looking ahead to 2023, Federico Beltrán is confident that costs will soften because "they are already going down somewhat". "It's impossible for us to get worse," he argues.
The Mercolleida quotations are used as a reference price for more than 90% of the purchases and sales of pigs carried out in Spain and, in the case of fattened pigs, it is the European reference for the Spanish price. It is the market with the highest weighting for the preparation of the average Spanish price of pork that is carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and that is later collected by the European Commission to calculate the average European price.
The fed pork table, which meets every Jew, is made up of eight slaughterhouses (Costa Brava Mediterranean Foods, Escorxador Frigorífic d'Avinyó, Famadesa, Fribin, Incarlopsa, Mafrica, Noel Alimentària SAU and El Pozo Alimentación) and eight producers (BonÀrea) Agrupa, Inga Food, Juan Jiménez, Mazana Piensos Compuestos, Piensos Costa, Piensos del Segre, Pinsos Yak and Vall Companys).
