Germany: Pork exports to third countries increased slightly
After Germany's pork exports have been declining steadily in recent years, this trend now seems to have stopped for the time being. At least, this is what the latest foreign trade figures from the Federal Statistical Office suggest. According to them, a total of around 708,000 tonnes of pork, including by-products, were exported from Germany from January to April 2024, which represented a slight increase of around 5,000 tonnes or around 0.7% compared to the same period last year. Although deliveries to countries within the EU fell, this was more than offset by an increase in exports to third countries.
The majority of the pork exported was delivered to countries within the EU: at 582,000 tonnes, this corresponded to 82.2% of total exports. Compared to the same period last year, however, there were 2.2% fewer exports to EU countries. The main reason for this was lower deliveries to the two most important buyer countries, Italy (-9% to around 100,000 tonnes) and the Netherlands (-10% to around 98,000 tonnes).
However, the increase in exports to third countries was crucial for the increase in total exports. Compared to the first four months of the previous year, Germany delivered around 126,000 tonnes, or 18,000 tonnes, more pork or by-products to countries outside the EU. The largest quantities went to the United Kingdom (around 40,000 tonnes), Vietnam (around 20,000 tonnes) and South Korea (around 18,000 tonnes). After the South Korean market had been closed to German pork for a long time due to the outbreak of ASF in Germany, deliveries were able to resume towards the end of last year after a regionalization agreement was concluded. This agreement means that many German slaughterhouses can continue to deliver to South Korea even after the most recent ASF cases - however, two German companies lost their export licenses in June.
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