Jamie Wyllie, a second-generation Scottish pig producer and chair of NFU Scotland's pigs committee, is closing his last pig unit. All pigs will be gone from the 850-sow herd by February 2027, the third unit he has shut in three years, after closing a 650-sow and a 900-sow unit when the business lost heavily in the previous downturn.
'The market has just completely collapsed once again,' he said. He has made five staff redundant. He expects the industry to recover and become buoyant again, but the question is how long that takes and how much more money would be lost getting there. 'I said to myself after the last time, I'm not doing it again. If the time between the two downturns had been longer, I would probably have stuck it out, but it was only three years ago.'
His father built the business from the first shed in the 1970s; Wyllie joined in 2008 and has seen three downturns, the first survived, the Covid-era one bad, this one worse. 'You can't sit and watch your bank balance going down by £100,000 a month, every month, and it not have some impact on you,' he said of the toll on his mental health last time.
Once the sows leave he will keep three full-time pig staff and buy weaners to finish, and has begun talks with weaner producers, some of whom are looking for buyers.
His advice to other producers weighing their future is to do what is right for themselves and their families, and, since the squeeze falls mainly on independent producers, to stand together behind the marketing co-operatives, United Pig Co-operative, Meadow Quality and Yorkshire Farmers: 'Once these marketing groups are gone, there will be nobody working for the independent producer anymore.'
Source: Pig World
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