Sainsbury’s offers £2.8m to support its pork farmers

Today, Sainsbury’s has announced an additional market leading support payment of up to £2.8m for its pork development group, the supermarket’s aligned farmer group designed to understand its farm base and increase visibility across the supplier chain.

In conjunction with its pork farmers the supermarket created a pricing mechanism, based on robust and transparent data, that has paid above market price for fresh pork since September 2020, totalling its overall investment in its pricing mechanism to £5m. The model was created to help provide resilience and security by reducing market volatility, influencing the Standard Pig Price* and benefitting the wider pork sector.

Through this successful pricing structure, the retailer has been able to offer additional short-term support through a £2.8m investment for its pork producers, giving them the opportunity to align all pigs supplied to Sainsbury’s, not currently part of the model, to a fixed price for the 12-week period from 13/03/22 – 05/06/22.

Gavin Hodgson, Sainsbury’s Head of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Horticulture said: “At Sainsbury’s we really value the relationships we have with our suppliers and believe that through support and collaboration we can uphold flexible, transparent supply chains that are able to navigate instability. The pork sector has seen unprecedented cost challenges and we hope that our further investment will provide our producers with security whilst maintaining high levels of animal health and welfare as well as product quality and great value for our customers.”

The supermarket continues to review its pricing model to ensure the longer-term safeguarding of supply, and work in collaboration with producers to deliver a supply chain that is resilient, efficient, and engaged.

*The average price for GB standard pigs that have not received a premium for the production system, feed regime or breed.