Farm gate prices continued to surge for free range egg producers during the second quarter of this year, according to the latest government figures.
Defra has released the egg statistics for the three months from April to June, and the figures show that farm gate prices were up by 10% for free range eggs compared with the same period in 2020.
The average price paid for a dozen free range eggs in the second quarter of 2021 was 99 pence.
This was up on the figure of 90p recorded in the second quarter the previous year and just slightly up on the 98p figure for the first quarter of this year.
This comes on top of a large increase in the first quarter of 2021. The average producer price for free range eggs from January to March this year was up by 13.5% compared with the first three months of 2020 – from 86.5p per dozen to 98.2p per dozen.
The average price for free range eggs was 92.4 pence per dozen in the final three months of 2020.
The increase in producer prices comes despite large increases in supplies of free range eggs passing through UK packing stations.
In the second quarter of 2021 4.6 million cases of free range eggs were handled by packing centres.
This was an increase of 15% on just under four million cases packed in the same period last year and was a 2.5% increase on the 4.5 million cases packed in the first three months of this year.
The first quarter figures were, themselves, an increase of 11.7% on the figure of 4 million in the first three months of 2020 and a 1.2% increase on the figure of 4.4m in the final quarter of last year.
Free range eggs now account for 58 percent of UK throughput, whilst the volume of cage production continues to decline.
Leading retailers in the UK are committed to moving away from cage eggs completely by 2025 at the latest.
