UHS: Eggs Hardly Profitable for Farmers, Retail Chains Feathering Nests
Bratislava, February 10 (TASR) – Egg production in Slovakia is hardly making any profits for primary producers, while retailers are collecting tidy profit margins, Lubomir Urban, press secretary of the Poultry Breeders Union (UHS) told at a press conference Wednesday.
“Consumer prices of eggs last year were significantly influenced by profit margins of retail chains spanning between 36-102 percent (of the original prices). While producers’ prices are under the EU average and have long been stagnating, consumer prices are rising,” said Urban.
According to UHS, retail chains should make their profit margins in eggs more realistic instead of pushing producers to squeeze their prices ever more. “Producers don’t have any scope to economise any further,” said Urban.
Slovakia last year produced 1.1 billion eggs, which meant that the country in theory was entirely self-sufficient in this commodity. However, Slovak eggs only had a 90-percent share on the market. According to a survey carried out by UHS earlier this month, exclusively Slovak eggs were present on the shelves of COOP Jednota, CBA, Lidl and Terno. “Conversely, the largest offer of imported eggs (from Poland) was in Tesco,” said Urban.
The highest quantity of eggs last year was exported from Slovakia to the Czech Republic, while Poland was completely outside the scope of Slovak egg exporters.
