With the 2010 congress of the European Pig Producers organistion coming to Eindhoven in the Netherlands, it seems appropriate that the current president of the EPP is Dutch. Erik Thijjsen was elected to the presidency last year, succeeding Per Bach Laursen from Denmark.
Mr Thijssen operates a 650-sow unit near Sevenum, in the south-east of the Netherlands, and also a breeding-finishing enterprise of 1,650 sows that he bought in May last year at Schwepnitz on the eastern side of Germany. Moreover, he is a member of the board of Pigture, the parent group of breeder Topigs.
When we asked Mr Thijssen recently for his view of Europe’s pig market prospects in 2010, he was guardedly optimistic.
“”I think the market will develop on a steady basis,” he commented. “Pig prices may not go up as much as we would like, but overall the expectation is that 2010 will be rather a normal year without any big surprises in the sense of production strongly increasing or going down.
“The years 2007 and 2008 saw a decline in European numbers of pigs and piglets. Since then, the market has not gone up so much that everyone now wants to be producing pigs! So I expect the supply and demand to match quite well and there should be the figures for producers to have a profit.”
