Eggs in Europe have stopped falling, but not because consumers came back. Processors kept buying steadily through the holiday lull, rebuilding stock ahead of an autumn pull, and that absorbed enough volume to offset thin retail demand. Underneath the flat headline, summer heat is cutting egg weight, so Western Europe is short of XL eggs even as medium sizes sit in abundance, a mismatch that keeps pressure on the top of the size curve. Germany and France have also decoupled on the industrial side: German processors are buying hard to build stock, while French spot trade for industry keeps sliding on easy supply, most likely because imports land more easily in France’s industrial channel than in Germany’s certified segments.
Europe’s egg powder market has come loose from the shell cycle entirely. White powder is firming as sports nutrition manufacturers swap whey for albumen, a demand source with no connection to where the shell market sits in its cycle, while an earlier wave of discounted Indian albumen exports to Japan has now cleared, removing a second drag on European offers. Yolk powder, by contrast, is trading with an unusually wide spread between offers, a sign of a market with no clear reference price. Imports are the ceiling on any European recovery: the EU brought in 99,447 tonnes of eggs in the first five months of 2026, up 93% year on year, with Ukraine supplying just over half and Turkey’s volumes up 31-fold. Disease risk is also creeping back, with a new avian flu case in German fattening turkeys and outbreaks confirmed in Poland’s Łódź province.
The US told the opposite story. Wholesale prices for graded loose caged eggs drifted lower even as retail interest held up, and cage-free white eggs corrected hard, down 20.6% week on week, as the promotional pull that had inflated the cage-free premium eased off. The topping process is visible in the size curve too: XL, large and medium eggs all reversed lower in the most recent week, while Jumbo kept firming on genuine scarcity at the top of the weight range. Supply stayed constrained from two separate directions, a voluntary recall of roughly 19 million eggs over a salmonella risk at two Texas farms, and continuing avian flu fear, which is why inventories have held low even as demand faded.
Europe’s direction into September is up on dated, plannable events: holidays ending, shutdowns finishing, canteens reopening. The US bias is neutral to soft on lighter sizes and firm on Jumbo, a split that should persist for several weeks unless disease news escalates.
This news article is part of a broader Vesper market analysis on the global eggs and derivatives markets. For the full market analysis, visit: https://app.vespertool.com/market-analysis/3306
