COVID19: Singapore Currently Facing Oversupply of Eggs

When Malaysia announced its lockdown in March, Singaporeans rushed to supermarkets to stock up on eggs and shelves were empty in no time. Prices of eggs started to increase slightly due to border restrictions.

Fast forward 3 months, Malaysia is out of lockdown and has resumed their supply. Eggs are flowing into Singapore from Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and recently Poland. At the same time, demand from F&B dropped and there was less demand due to muted Hari Raya celebrations this year.

As a result, egg suppliers find themselves having too many eggs. Distributor Kim Hock for example had to discard 250k eggs from Thailand last week. Egg prices has since dropped by more than 2 cents each.

Did Singapore go into overdrive trying to procure eggs from all over the world? A day after Malaysia’s Movement Control Order (MCO), Kee Chiu personally went to Changi Airport to receive 300k eggs from Thailand to show Singaporeans that we have more than enough eggs coming from other countries. Just this month, Polish eggs arrived in Singapore. Despite telling Singaporeans not to be kiasi, it seems that the government was also panic buying to ensure food security. Unfortunately, due to the mismatch in the enthusiastic procurement and reduced demand, distributors are selling eggs at a loss and eggs are being wasted.

Egg suppliers can only hope that demand will increase again when Phase 2 starts this Friday.