Empty shelves in the supermarket: the egg industry sounds the alarm

Created: 2022-11-14, 2:34 p.m

By: Raffaela Maas

Since packing stations and the egg products industry are currently having massive difficulties in supplying the German market with goods, eggs and egg products are expected to be scarce until Easter.

Munich – Customers from Aldi, Lidl and Co. are currently often faced with empty shelves.

Many products have been becoming increasingly scarce for weeks.

Now the Bundesverband Ei (BVEi) has sounded the alarm.

The supply of German supermarkets and discounters with eggs and egg products is no longer guaranteed until Easter, said BVEi chairman and egg producer Henner Schönecke.

The consequences are bottlenecks in the food retail trade and massive short-time work in the egg products industry, which supplies pasta and pastry manufacturers.

Egg shortages in food retail due to increased costs

As

reports, the situation became apparent a year ago and in March.

Since the costs for feed and energy have risen, the number of pullets housed has fallen significantly.

In addition, there are the additional costs for sex determination procedures in the egg or the co-financing of brother rooster rearing, since the killing of male day-old chicks has been prohibited in Germany since January 1, 2022.

, market participants report that the costs for housing 20,000 laying hens have doubled to 200,000 euros

.

In 2021 there were around 1900 laying hen farms in Germany with more than 3000 animals, which produced around 14.4 billion eggs worth 1 billion euros.

However, the number of chicks hatched in Germany fell to 29.4 million animals in 2021.

A year earlier it was 40.5 million, explains the BVEi.

BVEI calls for an EU-wide end to the killing of chicks and labeling of processed products

A part will be replaced by slippage abroad, where German law does not apply.

However, the eggs of these hens could not be marketed in the German food retail sector, since the latter insisted on production without killing the chicks.

However, this is not the case for processed products such as biscuits and pasta.

According to

, the BVEi is therefore demanding an EU-wide end to the killing of chicks and labeling of processed products "so that German laying hen farmers do not find themselves in even greater difficulties as a result of this massive competitive disadvantage".

Politicians are also called upon to compensate for the losses with a financially strong emergency aid program and thus make a contribution to securing domestic egg production.

The already difficult supply situation is further exacerbated by bird flu.

According to a marketer from the largest German producer Deutsche Frühstücksei, a large stock had to be culled.

With the plague rampant in other countries like the US, "Europe is being bought empty right now," he reported.

Appeal to the trade - BVEI hopes for a concession

Schönecke is now appealing to retailers to refrain from paying fines: "In this particular situation, retailers must be aware that it is no longer possible to comply with contractually agreed quantities.

We need to be accommodating when drafting contracts.” He suggests shorter contract terms and escalation clauses in order to be able to react more flexibly to price fluctuations,

reports .

It is currently not known whether this has been successful for the contracts for 2023 that were newly concluded in autumn.

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But not only eggs are currently scarce: recently there have often been shortages of certain foods and products in supermarkets or discounters.

Now the paper industry is also sounding the alarm because the product shortage threatens to repeat itself.