Europe’s pork producers and processors continue to face many difficult challenges:The industry continues to be confronted with ever-increasing competition as illustrated by Brazil’s current negotiations with Russia to fill a greater proportion of imports and squeeze out existing European suppliers. Moreover, this competitive environment is now set against the backdrop of global recession in which sinking GDP in key markets such as Japan has resulted in a reduction in demand for pork meat imports. Nor has the threat of high feed prices been fully removed; soybean and corn prices may start to tick up again as planters reduced their input use due to the absence of credit lines.
In such challenging market conditions a number of large players have been proactive in developing strategies to cope with these difficulties: