Good afternoon,

Eggs:
Here is some explanation for the rapid rise in egg prices.

“Urner Barry made huge increases across the board for next week as some buyers are finding supplies limited and making it difficult to fill orders. Similar to the last couple of weeks, this is largely a result of more at-home cooking coupled with winter weather, flock reductions, and exports to Mexico, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, and now, South Korea.”

On Monday of this week, the national egg inventories were down 6.0% vs last week, and 9.7% less than levels one year ago. This is the second-lowest level since August of last year.
Strong demand did what I thought would have required flock reductions at the producer level to do. We don’t know how long prices will stay at these levels, but producers need these higher prices to offset recent cost increases on feed, packaging materials, and other costs.

We expect more of the same next week.

Butter:
Butter reached a low of $1.29 last week and buyers found it too cheap to resist. The market surged .165 before dropping back .0525 today. I would venture to guess we will end up in the mid to upper $1.30’s next week.

Cheese:
Cheese has been on a roller coaster over the last 3 weeks. Both Block and Barrel jumped when the Farms to Families Food Box program was announced, and the markets began to correct last Friday. With the close being lower than the averages, next week could drop even more.

There is a burdensome amount of inventory because production has been robust and demand is lackluster. There is hope that exports can deplete some of these inventories as we are priced well against the world market. Time will tell.

Things are coming along extremely well at our new state-of-the-art facility on Tacony St in Philadelphia. We have a brand new WMS system that will help in warehouse efficiency, order consolidation, and accuracy.  A big shout out to the Operations Team for their monumental efforts to make this happen. We thank you for your continued business and hope you have a safe and relaxing weekend.