By Tom Woolman, poultry industry consultant
This month I have been pulling together an outlook on the egg market, with some help from Tom Willings, another industry consultant. It has given me an opportunity to review how different the mood is from only twelve months ago.
I have been writing it at the same time that the Oxford Farming Conference published a damning report into recent supply chain failures, for which the author had significant input from producer organisations like BFREPA.
Discussions centre around why the behaviour of retailers towards the egg sector needs to change. Recent comments with packers indicate buyers are becoming more collaborative, notably Aldi and Lidl, who have always tended to be a bit more transactional in their approach.
The number of branded eggs in the market continues to multiply and add value to the sector in a way that I’m sure the poultry meat wishes it could emulate. Speciality products like duck or quail eggs may have been particularly hard hit by the bird flu epidemic, but consumer demand is still reliably high for these little luxuries, despite the proverbial pressures on the cost of living.
A big question mark remains over how the cage-free transition will play out. Although we are now in the eighth year since commitments to ditch colony eggs were articulated, there is still so much uncertainty out there it seems that good old market forces are going to be called on to work out the detail over the next couple of years.
What if bird flu returns en masse next year? What if the planning system remains blocked and leads to a long term shortage of housing stock? If you thought that the rollercoaster ride was over I suspect there will be a few more twists and turns yet.
On another note, a few months ago I wrote about Morrisons’ farmers not feeling any better off than the rest of the industry, despite all their farmer friendly marketing material. I have subsequently been informed that if you are growing broilers for Morrisons that the margins are just about the best you can get supplying into an integrator….I stand corrected!