African swine fever in Finland halts Atria and HKFoods exports to Japan, China and beyond

Finland has recorded its first-ever case of African swine fever (ASF). On 30 July 2026, a resident near Vaalimaa in Virolahti found three dead wild piglets and brought them to the Finnish Food Authority. Preliminary tests came back positive.

The result is now being confirmed at the EU reference laboratory in Spain. The Authority has drawn a restriction zone around the site, limited pig movements within it, and is working to gauge how far the virus has spread among wild boar. ASF does not infect humans.

The finding reached the stock exchange almost immediately. On 31 July, Finland's two listed meat producers, Atria and HKFoods, issued near-identical statements: neither has contract pig farms inside the restriction zone, and Finnish pork remains safe to eat. But several export markets automatically bar pork from any country where ASF is detected, regardless of where the case occurred.

For Atria, exports to Japan, China, Singapore and Taiwan stopped with immediate effect. It can still ship within the EU and to South Korea, the one non-EU market where a regionalisation agreement lets trade continue based on where an outbreak sits. "Our aim is to open talks immediately with the countries where exports have now stopped," said Markku Hirvijärvi, head of Atria Finland's meat business and exports. Chicken and beef exports are unaffected. HKFoods likewise suspended non-EU pork exports, including to China and Japan, and says it will redirect those volumes elsewhere.

Both companies had flagged this scenario only weeks earlier. Atria's half-year report warned the pork market would stay unstable through end-2026, citing the ASF outbreak identified in Spain in the fourth quarter of 2025, falling pork exports on the back of China's import tariffs, and demand in Europe running below expectations; it also disclosed a EUR 0.6 million cost from an ASF case at its own Estonian farm a year earlier. HKFoods' first-quarter report stated the risk of ASF reaching Finland had "increased significantly" since the disease appeared on Estonian pig farms in June 2025.