EU-KOM Short Term Outlook: robust EU pork market 2020 In its forecast for 2020, the EU Commission (EU-COM) considers the pork market to be very resilient to the turmoil caused by the Covid19 pandemic. The forecast is based on the EU-27 figures, i.e. excluding the UK, which is considered a third country. The market experts expect a slight increase in production to 23.2 million tons compared to the previous year. The increase is mainly due to inventory increases in Spain and the Netherlands . A decline of 2% is predicted for Germany based on the cattle count results. The Covid19 pandemic is said to affect the pork market relatively little. In contrast, the ASP in 10 Member States remains a constant threat to the rest. On the demand side , an ongoing decline in consumption in the domestic market of the remaining 27 countries is forecast.Pork consumption drops by 1.8% to only 18.67 million tons. Compared to 2018, the decrease is even 5.5%. Only 32.5 kg of pork are consumed per capita per year. The catering sector will be particularly hard hit by the drop in consumption. The 20% pork surplus of the EU-27 can be sold without major difficulties in third country exports. After last year's sales increases of 16.6%, an increase of 12% is to be achieved again this year. A total of 4.67 million tons are to be sold. The largest customer is China / HK with a share of approx. 45% or 2.5 million tons. Great Britain ranks second with a share of 18% or approx. 1 million tons . Japan is far behind with 8.1% and South Korea with 4.8%.EU-COM forecasts that the strong demand from China and other importing countries will lead to stable prices at a high level if production volumes only increase moderately.
