The Hindu Business Line : Shell egg producers on stable ground

THE tight supply-demand position and perceived increase in local consumption have enabled Tamil Nadu's shell egg producers weather price pressures, unlike their counterparts in the broiler segment who continue to wilt under production glut and erosion in their market price in recent weeks.

Amidst encouraging market report pointing toward a possible demand perch up over the next few weeks, the layer producers and the traders in the State have agreed to rise the farm-gate egg rate by two paise to Rs 1.42 a piece this week. The egg market sources indicate that the wholesale egg procurement rate will touch Rs 1.45 level by this weekend or the next week in view of the anticipated consumption of table egg that may scale up due to Christmas/New Year celebrations.

"We expect the sale of egg to get further boost coinciding with Christmas celebrations and the price of table egg too will gain strength on account of this," egg trade sources in the Namakkal poultry zone maintain.

Sources told Business Line that even as egg shipments from Namakkal region continue to remain vibrant with a daily despatch of around 13-15 lakh eggs, the noon-meal offtake of another 10-12 lakh eggs too has butted in to keep the demand and supply line for table eggs in the State in favour of the sellers. The excess shell egg supply syndrome has been reigned in in recent times partly on account of restrictive production practices at farm levels, the daily egg production in the Namakkal zone is more or less being kept below 11 million eggs, which has gone to stabilise the selling price, trade sources say.

On the contrary, the slide in the live chicken price in the State continued for the third week and the wholesale per kg price of broiler was further slashed this week to Rs 25 from last week's Rs 27 by the State broiler coordination committee. The actual sale price in the market is stated to be still lower by another Rs 2.

The broiler market outlook for the coming weeks is likely to be barren as whatever gains made during the Christmas/New Year celebrations will be nullified by an equally lower levels of consumption during `Margazhi', a religiously austere month.