A magyarországi húsfeldolgozás, -tartósítás szakágazat koncentrációjának változása 2015–2021 között

The pig sector faced several crises in the period 2015–2021, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the African swine fever epidemic and the significant increase in global feed prices in 2021. The decisive role of economies of scale is known in the industrial sector. Concentration can be used to measure the extent to which production in an economic sector is concentrated in the ownership of large plants. The aim of the study is to determine and compare the concentration of Hungarian pork processing in 2015 and 2021 by analyzing the size of the actors in the meat processing and preservation (TEÁOR 10.11) sector. Focusing on this area, we would like to make a proposal to increase the competitiveness of Hungarian pork processing. As part of secondary data collection, we first processed the data obtained from the EMIS database using maps and examined the territorial concentration of the activity. We further analyzed the industry concentration using the four-company concentration ratio (CR4), Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI), Gini index and Lorenz curve. Based on the results obtained, the industry concentration is high. However, literature data show that it lags behind the concentration of developed Western countries (USA, Denmark). Compared to 2015, examining the balance sheet total, the HHI, CR4 and Gini index also increased in 2021. During the same period, the CR4 and Gini index calculated based on sales increased, while the HHI decreased. However, the increase in concentration was not sufficient for the concentration of the Hungarian meat processing and preservation industry to catch up with the value of the most competitive Western countries. The increase in competitiveness of Hungarian pork processing can be facilitated by further increasing concentration and thus increasing economies of scale. For this reason, it is recommended to establish and broaden integration cooperation between market players.