Weaners on the road to profit
By FWi staff
WERE a bit bullish, for the first time in two years, says Ralph Ward. At
Hull and Beverley markets, where he auctions pigs, weaner producers may at
last be seeing a bit of profit at recent price levels, while finishers are
just about breaking even.
At Beverley, Mr Ward reports more demand than supply, with prices around
£1/kg. Typically, lots of about 250 head are going to medium-scale
feeders in the area.
“Weve got back (into the market) some people who were buying their weaners
directly from producers close to home. Many of these have dried up – gone
out of business.”
Meanwhile, new vendors have replaced some of those who ceased pig-keeping,
and Mr Ward says he has seen no reduction in finished pigs being offered.
The contrary, in fact.
“Theyre not as loyal to the deadweight buyers as they used to be. They feel
they had no loyalty shown to them, and thatll bring a lot of people back
into liveweight sales.”
He claims market prices have of late been ahead of the deadweight trade.
Further south, at Northampton, Mike Carter sold 120 sows on Tuesday to
40p/kg liveweight. “Thats double what they were 12 months ago,” he
comments.
“Now they are back to about £120 a head – still a lot
below what they have been, but much better than recently.”
Weaners, meanwhile, are mostly traded farm-to-farm, but market offerings
have been rewarded in the last two or three weeks with prices improved by
£10-12/head.