Tavros plans to increase egg production

In the last months of last year, there was a significant increase in prices for chicken eggs , despite the increase in production, which, according to Agrifood Strategies, amounted to 1.5% compared to 2022. The company's president, Albert Davleyev, notes that the price increase was due to a combination of factors, with consumer panic coming to the fore at the end of the year. "First, there was an increase in demand, then it exceeded supply, then consumer panic demand, which grew into consumer panic," he lists. At the same time, the expert recalls, over the past 30 years, there has never been panic, or even panic demand, for eggs . "There was a seasonal factor - demand always grew before Easter and before the New Year," he adds.

Such a significant excess of consumer demand for eggs is explained by the increased money supply among the population, explains Davleyev - in such a situation it is very difficult to predict how much the demand for a particular product will grow. "An additional and very significant factor in the panic and price growth was the unprecedentedly active discussion of the topic of "egg deficit" in the media," he commented.

At the end of November 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko instructed the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to take measures aimed at increasing domestic production of chicken MEAT and chicken eggs. As a top manager of one of the egg production companies explains, the implementation of projects to increase volumes takes time - it is necessary to prepare a project, coordinate it, find contractors, select equipment. "And given that all the equipment was previously purchased in Europe, and all its suppliers left the Russian market, its acquisition implies additional difficulties," he notes.

In addition, to eliminate the egg deficit, a decision was made to open duty-free imports from friendly countries. However, as reported by Rusprodsoyuz, imported eggs are mainly sent for processing. At the same time, prices for eggs from foreign suppliers, taking into account logistics, turned out to be no lower than Russian ones, even with zero duty. 

According to Davleyev, egg prices have been falling since the beginning of January. "The salad season ended, and everything started to return to normal," he explains. According to Rosstat, consumer prices for eggs fell by 1% in the last week of January. Davleyev expects egg prices to fall at least until the end of February, unless there are outbreaks of bird flu at poultry farms, which no one is immune from. Thus, at the beginning of the year, an outbreak of the disease occurred at the Vladimirskaya poultry farm in the Astrakhan region, which produced about 350 million eggs per year; the restoration of production after quarantine measures may not be completed until the beginning of next year.