The chair of Sask Pork is warning Saskatchewan’s pork producers to be prepared for reduced profitability as pork production expands in response to record profits this past summer.
The 37th Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium is slated for Tuesday and Wednesday in Saskatoon.
Saskatchewan Pork Development Board Chair Florian Possberg says the big story for 2014 has been record profits this past summer fueled by lower supplies as the result of disease issues in the United States and Mexico.
We’re not likely to see those kind of levels of profit in 2015.
In fact some of the disease challenges are being met by producers that have had PED in the U.S. and Mexico and so that loss of production is likely to be replaced by better performance in 2015.
We’re likely to see supplies of pork increase, not only because of better disease control but also high levels of profit have encouraged producers to expand within their operations and in some cases some new construction.
As well we’re seeing some of the competing meats particularly chicken is starting to grow their business in response to profits so we’re looking at significantly more pork and chicken into 2015 which will likely reduce our price and if we look longer term into 2016 there’s a possibility that we could see quite a large growth in terms of pork and poultry which could really have a depressing effect on our prices.
Possberg says pork producers are going to be challenged with lower profitability and perhaps even some losses in 2016 and beyond so it’s important put the resources in place to weather the storm and focus on being efficient and competitive.
