Slowly, movement is also coming into our market. It will remain the unfathomable mystery of this trade why it has once again taken weeks, perhaps even months, for market realities to actually translate into the our market. Our lack of understanding and all the arguments and facts have been sufficiently illuminated in recent weeks. There was actually no news this week that could perhaps be interpreted as the trigger. The only explanation one might have is, on the one hand, the time rhythm of the price agreements in Central Europe, which has a stronger effect the less goods are exported overseas. The prices at the slaughterhouses are fixed in a four-week rhythm and within this time almost nothing is changed in the official price lists. Again and again, one only tries to implement what happens at the slaughterhouses in some form on the markets. This influence becomes somewhat less when the share of business in Asia is larger, where traditionally the international market situation is analysed almost daily by the tanners, who then draw the right or perhaps wrong conclusions and set their prices accordingly. Things actually went wrong here in Europe in March already, and the really annoying thing is that mistakes made by individuals unfortunately always affect almost everyone in the same way for a long time. Well, it can’t be helped and as long as people are not prepared to orient themselves to facts and relatively easy-to-analyse data, it will stay that way. The market situation changed relatively quickly this week in the middle of the week. All of a sudden, more and more reports emerged of offers from well-known suppliers in larger volumes in China, where prices were reduced significantly without really seeming already exceptionally attractive. It is of course

because the price level had simply been far too high for the international markets for a long time before. In Europe, the remarkable thing was that this week some larger suppliers were already trying to either place special spot deals with regular customers or were already ready to talk about the next period with delivery volumes and prices. This is particularly unusual and usually means that, despite the low slaughter, fears were spreading that prices would fall and/or that people had simply not yet sold all their production. In the end, none of this is surprising and it merely initiated the already long overdue process of price adjustments. We do not believe that very many deals have already been made. On the one hand, because in China the uncertainty about the development of the pandemic still dominates and, on the other hand, in Europe the tanners have certainly created the necessary conditions to position themselves better in the next price negotiations and not to have to accept prices that are considered too high. Thus, no really new price levels can be identified yet. What is certain, however, is that every deal made this week was concluded at lower prices than before. The discount was certainly based on the customer and supplier relationship. In the case of good relations, reasonable discounts will still have been agreed and otherwise there will not have been too many options for the seller and no mercy from the buyer.

The kill

Nothing really changed in the kill this week either. Levels remain low, live cattle prices continue to fall marginally and with the weather slowly improving we see no reason for this to change next week.

What do we expect

The next two weeks will now be the phase of new price discovery. The decisive factor will certainly be the new negotiations for May at the slaughterhouses. The market and the difficulties will certainly not change in the short term. The only question that remains is whether this can be reflected to the full extend in the slaughterhouse prices.