Analysis Chicken & Poultry meat
Demand for poultry meat strong for winter
The poultry meat market has calmed down after a sharp decline. Now that consumers are adopting their winter eating patterns again, the demand for chicken is decreasing. However, the demand is clearly better than in previous years due to the structural increase.
The broiler price remains stable for the second week in a row after a significant drop two weeks ago. Broilers are currently being traded at €1.09 per kilogram.
After roughly two wild months, calm has returned to the broiler market. At the beginning of autumn, chicken was quite popular. After the holidays, chicken became popular as consumers wanted to save on their food expenses. Initially, this mainly affected the popularity of pork, which is currently clearly more expensive for consumers. Additionally, the supply of broilers decreased. Suddenly, a much larger number of broiler farms were unable to deliver than usual. This led to a sharp decrease in supply. As a result, the supply remained lower for several weeks, resulting in significantly higher prices.
Around week 42, the additional supply became available all at once. This put considerable pressure on the broiler price, but at the same time, the demand for chicken also decreased significantly. This is a fairly normal seasonal pattern. The demand for chicken always decreases in autumn. Consumers tend to prefer heavier foods during this period. In the Netherlands, this generally means heavier products such as sausages, bacon, and stew meat. As a result, beef and pork gain popularity at the expense of poultry meat. However, this year, due to the significant extra supply, this effect was greatly intensified, causing prices of both poultry parts and broilers to take a significant step downwards.
Normalization?
The situation is now said to have normalized in the market. The supply has returned to normal, and the additional supply has been largely absorbed. It also helps that there is still hardly any import. Polish poultry prices are still too high to justify imports. The poultry prices range between 5.20 zloty (€1.20) and 5.40 zloty (€1.24). Prices on the world market are also much higher than in the Netherlands. Due to the resurgence of bird flu in key markets such as the United States, Brazilian prices have risen significantly. The Brazilian broiler price is at 8.04 real (€1.31) per kilogram.
Compared to previous years, the demand is strong. Slaughterhouses are still not complaining about the demand or prices. Although the demand is clearly lower than a few months ago, this is expected in the poultry meat industry. Due to a structural increase in poultry meat consumption, the demand remains high for this time of year. This is reflected in the price. In 2023, the price of poultry meat also dropped significantly during this period of the year. However, in practice, the decline continued considerably longer before the price reached a plateau.
