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Pressure from the East, Investment from the West: This Week in the Poultry and Egg Industry
This week in the industry brings a clash of two trends that together paint a good picture of the state of Europe's poultry and egg market. On one hand, Ukraine is closing in on the EU's duty-free limits for eggs and poultry, signaling growing import competition for Polish and EU producers. On the other, a Spanish egg giant shows that capital in Europe's egg sector is flowing generously toward animal welfare, even amid a challenging market environment.
01 · Trade and Imports
Ukraine Has Exhausted Its Egg Quota, Poultry Close Behind [1]
The Ukrainian Agribusiness Club (UKAB) reported in mid-September that Ukraine has fully used up the EU's tariff quota for eggs and egg products – the limit of 6,750 tonnes for the January-September period has been reached. The poultry quota, set at around 70,000 tonnes, is also close to being exhausted [1]. The pace at which both limits were filled says a lot on its own about the scale of Ukrainian export production directed at the EU market.
What does this mean in practice? Once the threshold is crossed, further exports of these products to the European Union aren't cut off entirely, but they become subject to duty – which inevitably erodes the profitability of Ukrainian exports in the coming months. For Polish poultry farmers and egg producers, though, this is an ambivalent signal: on one hand, it confirms just how much import pressure has built up along the eastern border in recent years; on the other, the quota-and-tariff mechanism still acts as a protective buffer for the EU market [1]. It's worth keeping an eye on whether, and in what form, the quotas will be renewed for the next settlement period, since this issue has been energizing domestic producers for months and is bound to resurface in industry discussions more than once this year. It's also a reminder that the scale of imports from countries outside the Community can shift faster than domestic producers can react.
02 · Animal Welfare
Huevos Guillén: €200 Million to Phase Out Cages in Spain [2]
While the market grapples with import pressure, part of the industry is investing in an entirely different direction – animal welfare. Huevos Guillén, the main egg supplier for the Spanish retail chain Mercadona, has announced a four-year, €200 million investment plan aimed at fully transitioning to cage-free production by 2028 [2].
The scale of the plan is impressive even on the nearest time horizon: by the end of 2026, as much as 80% of the company's 6.13 million laying hens are to be kept in cage-free systems. A key element of the plan is a new free-range farm in Badajoz, worth €14.5 million and designed for 320,000 hens [2]. This is one of the largest private investments in laying hen welfare in Europe in recent years – and a clear signal of the direction the entire EU egg market is heading in, given the anticipated EU-wide cage ban. For Polish producers, it's also a hint that regulatory and consumer pressure toward alternative systems isn't going to ease up – and that investments in this direction are worth planning ahead of time, rather than waiting until the last moment, when the costs of retrofitting farms could be even higher. It's also worth noting that investments like this are often backed by consumer-facing communication, since animal welfare is increasingly becoming a deciding factor for shoppers at the shelf.
03
Two Faces of the Same Market
These two stories, though they concern different countries and different phenomena, illustrate well just how many dimensions the European poultry and egg market is changing on at once – from trade geopolitics to production ethics. Polish farmers and producers have to keep an eye on price competitiveness against imports from across the eastern border while also investing in welfare standards that will, sooner or later, become mandatory across the entire Union. Companies that are already planning investments in both areas today will have the edge once regulation and market pressure accelerate.
We'll be discussing how to reconcile these two challenges – competitiveness and compliance with growing welfare requirements – in more depth at Poultry Tech 2026 – Trade Fair for Poultry Farming and Egg Production. It's a chance to meet technology suppliers, farmers, and industry experts all in one place and exchange first-hand experience. We look forward to seeing you there!
Invitation
Want to know how to protect your farm from import pressure while preparing for the EU cage ban? Visit Poultry Tech 2026, where you'll meet technology suppliers, market experts, and farmers from across Europe. Talk through the strategies industry leaders — like Spain's Huevos Guillén — are already putting into practice.
Poultry Tech 2026Footnotes
[1] Portal Spożywczy — https://www.portalspozywczy.pl/technologie/wiadomosci/ukraina-wyczerpala-unijny-limit-tego-produktu-nie-wysle-juz-bez-cla,293206.html[2] Euro Weekly News — https://euroweeklynews.com/2026/09/10/this-spanish-supermarket-delivers-a-major-win-for-animal-welfare-in-spain/