UBM: the domestic feed industry can expand by nearly 20 percent in 2024

By: STA Date: 2024. 05. 23. 10:15

The prospects for the Hungarian feed industry in 2024 are favorable: the decrease experienced in 2022 and 2023 may be followed by a rebound this year, and with an expected increase of nearly 20 percent, the volume of domestic feed production may reach the level of around 4 million tons this year – according to the announcement of the UBM agricultural company group.

According to their information sent to MTI on Wednesday, the Hungarian feed industry basically serves domestic needs, regardless of the fact that certain sectors of animal husbandry, especially the poultry sector, are particularly export-oriented. Only roughly 5 percent of all feed produced here, 150-250 thousand tons of feed per year, is exported, primarily to Romania. It was announced: in 2021, about 50 percent of all feed produced in Hungary was produced for poultry, about a third for pigs, and another 12 percent for ruminants (mainly cattle), the amount of other feed in addition to these amounted to approximately 120,000 tons. These rates have basically not changed last year either.

Péter Zoltán, an expert of the UBM Group, highlighted in the announcement: last year, the prices of raw materials for animal feed normalized, and in 2024, it is expected that they will neither move down nor up significantly from the current levels. In terms of input costs and energy prices, the sector-shattering event is not expected this year.

Founded in 1996, UBM is one of the country’s largest agricultural company groups, which is Hungary’s market-leading feed producer and one of the largest traders of feed raw materials. UBM operates a total of 6 feed factories in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, which produced a total of 600,000 tons of feed in 2023. In the first half of the 2023/24 business year – i.e. the period from July 1 to December 31, 2023 – 54.3 percent (HUF 57.25 billion) of the total sales revenue of the UBM Group came from exports. The most important export markets of the company group are Italy, Austria, Germany and Romania.

MTI