Monique Steele, Rural Journalist

Egg producers are hopeful prices have peaked and the egg shortage of early-2023 will soon be a distant memory.

The country's layer hen population is continuing to grow, meaning there should be more eggs in-market at a cheaper price.

Eggs have been in short supply - and expensive - since the start of the year when a ban on battery-caged hens came into effect, sparking shortages across the country.

He said the layer hen population had grown from 3.4 million in February to 3.8 million - and added there should be another 100,000 more by January.

Egg Producers' Federation executive director Michael Brooks said it had been a "fairly brutal" time for farmers making the costly switch.

He said the rising cost of grain, and the decision by Foodstuffs and Woolworths, formerly Countdown, to also ban colony-caged hen's eggs by 2025, had intensified the situation.

"It's been a very tough couple of years for the layer hen farming industry," Brooks said.

"There's been huge financial pressures on farmers ... It was a minimum of $1 million just to change from the old style cage to the colony cage, then if you were going into free range that meant buying a whole new farm, a new set up. So some really big costs and a lot of investment.

"All those things had an impact, so it's lead to a pretty messy situation, and it's taken a while for the supply to bounce back, but it is just about there now."

Egg prices had come off historic highs, with Stats NZ's latest figures showing them falling for the third month in a row since the peak in July.

"That's the first time in a good couple of years we've started to see maybe it's topped out in terms of prices," Brooks said.

"Prior to that, for the past couple of years, it's just been up and up and up - as consumers will know.

"But consumers will understand, I believe, that there are all these external pressures that have come onto farmers. It's been pretty rugged. Not just general inflation but a whole range of other factors coming into the situation."

Brooks said it was an extraordinary situation this year, but he was hopeful supply would be secured into the new year and prices should be more reasonable.

This story was originally published by RNZ