In-Ovo Sexing: Market Penetration and Forecast

IAA Team | May 14, 2025

Previous Reports: 2024

Summary

Original research conducted by Innovate Animal Ag shows that at the end of Q1 2025:

  • 28% of the EU’s 393 million hen flock was sexed with in-ovo technology—an 8-point increase in one year.

  • Since 2022, 175 million male embryos have been removed before hatching.

  • EU adoption has compounded at 147% over the last four years, outpacing the early scale-up curves of LED lighting, iPhones, color TV, internet, AC, and home electricity.

  • In-ovo sexing is just beginning its rollout in the US, and currently represents less than 1% of the US’ 310 million head commercial layer flock. In Norway, in-ovo sexing has hit a 20-25% penetration.

  • The global penetration of in-ovo sexing is expected to continue its sharp growth in the next few years, led by rapid expansion in the US, continued strength in Europe, and penetration into greenfield markets like Australia, Canada, UK, and Brazil.

Market Penetration

Innovate Animal Ag estimated the market penetration of in-ovo sexing technology globally by combining data from proprietary surveys of the technology suppliers, expert interviews, and other publicly available information.

Given there are some areas of uncertainty, we estimate that of the 393 million commercial laying hens in production in the EU, 102.3 to 117.9 million of them were sexed with in-ovo technology, implying a market penetration of 26 to 30%. This marks an 8 percentage point increase from 1 year ago, when the market penetration in the EU was found to be 20%. This remarkable jump lines up with a rapid increase in in-ovo sexing capacity between late 2023 and early 2025.. 

In the last 4 years, around 460 million hatching eggs were run through in-ovo sexing machines, or around 4 hatching eggs per second. Of these 460 million hatching eggs, roughly 175 million were male embryos removed before hatching.

There are also four non-EU countries that have in-ovo sexing technology—the United States, the UK, Switzerland, and Norway. 

Norway was the first country to adopt in-ovo sexing for its local egg market without regulatory pressure in 2023 and its market penetration has now reached 20 to 25%. Tone Steinsland, the owner and operator of the largest hatchery in the country told us that “one aim behind the investment was also to help the whole egg industry in Norway increase the competitiveness of the Norwegian eggs. Sooner or later, we believe our move to introduce in-ovo sexing to Norway, will lead to an industry standard and that we will be one of the first countries where 100% of the chicks are in-ovo sorted.”

In Switzerland, poultry industry stakeholders also decided to adopt in-ovo sexing technology in the country’s two main hatcheries, Animalco and Prodavi. The hatcheries are installing Orbem’s technology, and will begin production for the entire Swiss layer flock this year. 

Hatcheries in the United States have only recently installed in-ovo sexing equipment. Though the first few flocks of chicks have been produced, these flocks’ eggs will not hit the grocery store shelves until this summer. Taken together, all production so far in the US accounts for less than 1% of the entire flock of layers, but is expected to rapidly increase in the coming year.

The UK is a different story, where though one of Agri-Advanced Technologies’ (AAT) Cheggy machines is installed in the country, UK retailers and egg producers have not yet incorporated hens from the technology into their supply chain.

Analysis

One of the most notable findings of this report is that the EU’s adoption of in-ovo sexing technology compounded at 147% annually, moving from 2% to nearly 30% penetration in only 3 years. This implies that the technology is racing up the adoption curve faster than many other modern technologies. By comparison, LED lighting increased at a 97% compounded annual growth rate on its way from 2% to 30% penetration, the iPhone at 72%, and color TV at 57%. Foundational utilities scaled even more slowly. At the same part of the adoption curve, the internet globally grew at 23%, residential air-conditioning at 15%, and US home electrification at just 9%. In other words, hatchery innovation is outpacing some of the most transformative consumer and infrastructure rollouts in the last century, a testament to the hard work of the egg producers, hatchery operators, scientists, and technology companies who have made this progress possible.

This rapid adoption also benefits from the structural advantage that in-ovo sexing sits at the very top of the egg supply chain. While Europe has thousands of farms and hundreds of egg packers, it relies on only a small number of hatcheries. Equipping just a handful of those facilities can therefore transform an entire market—Switzerland and Norway, for instance, each need only two machines to effectively eliminate culling from their national egg supply.

Unit economics have also improved markedly since the technology’s launch. R&D advances have made each machine faster and more accurate, but an equally important driver has been the way early hatcheries have reengineered their workflows. These machines don’t operate in a vacuum; they slot into facilities where operational procedures were refined over decades. The machines fundamentally reshape how eggs move through the hatchery, and creative new procedures have allowed hatcheries to capitalize on the technology’s labor and energy-saving advantages. As deployment spreads, these lessons will transfer to new regions, and manufacturers will benefit from both these new lessons and the technology’s economies of scale. Taken together, these factors should keep the adoption curve steep.

Forecast

The global penetration of in-ovo sexing is expected to continue its sharp growth in the next few years, led by rapid expansion in the US, continued strength in Europe, and penetration into greenfield markets like Australia, Canada, UK, and Brazil.

United States

The most notable growth in the coming years will be in the US market. There are now three in-ovo sexing machines in US hatcheries, two AAT Cheggy machines at Hyline hatcheries and a Respeggt Circuit at Hendrix’s Nebraska facility. It was also recently reported that Orbem opened an office in Texas and is preparing for US installations in 2025. This all comes before the first eggs free of male culling are even available on grocery store shelves in the country. 

Early adoption of the technology from specialty egg producers NestFresh and Kipster have prompted all major specialty brands to consider how the introduction of this new egg category will affect their brand positioning. And as these eggs hit the shelf and awareness of male culling grows, consumers—rather than just expressing outrage about the issue—will become more loyal to brands that have adopted the technology to solve the challenge.

But it is not just the US speciality sector where we expect growth in demand over the coming year. The largest US retailer, Walmart, has also included in-ovo sexing as a focus area in their latest egg supplier guidelines. We previously predicted that in-ovo sexing would proliferate throughout the speciality category before jumping to the commodity sector, but Walmart’s announcement suggests in-ovo sexing might start to gain a footing in various segments of the market simultaneously. Indeed, the United Egg Producers, a trade association representing both commodity and speciality producers has demonstrated leadership on this issue by rolling out their own in-ovo sexing certification. Overall, growing consumer awareness and cross-segment demand in the US will drive significant growth in the penetration in the year to come.

Europe

There will also be continued strength in Europe as the market penetration continues to climb over the coming years. In the medium term, a regulatory ban on culling in Italy, set to take effect by 2027, will ultimately increase the market penetration in Europe by around 40 million layers.

But it won’t just be regulatory pressure leading to the continued adoption of the technology in Europe. The impact of the technology in Norway is set to grow. Norwegian CPG conglomerate Nortura, which accounts for 75% of Norwegian egg production, announced that all eggs produced will use the technology in the coming years. Additionally, Orbem’s in-ovo sexing technology at the Norwegian Sirevåg Rugeri hatchery is now up and running and just produced its first chicks in April 2025.

Switzerland and the Netherlands are also set to drastically increase their production in the absence of government mandates. The Dutch government recently announced an industry led plan to prevent the culling of 6 to 7 million males annually who are hatched to supply the Dutch egg market. Dutch hatcheries are already largely technologically prepared for this transition. Most hatcheries in the Netherlands are already equipped with in-ovo sexing machines to supply the German market. Switzerland, as discussed above, is also set to start using in-ovo sexing for their entire layer flock this year.

Much of the EU growth in market penetration has come from Germany and France, which have bans on male culling. There may be some reasons to suspect that these markets may soon become saturated, leading to a slowdown in the growth rate of the technology in Europe. However, we forecast that even these countries will see modest growth as producers continue to switch from male rearing to in-ovo sexing. Further, EU organic production regulations were recently refined to accommodate in-ovo sexing procedures, which used to be prohibited. This is a significant change given organic production has well over 10% market share in both the German and French markets. This rule change has already led one of Germany’s prominent organic hatcheries, Ab Ovo Bio, to purchase a Respeggt Circuit. 

Finally, the UK is likely to move forward with in-ovo sexing production in the coming years. With a machine already installed locally, the country is in a good position to capitalize on the growing trend of in-ovo sexing adoption. Robust consumer survey data suggest that there is a strong preference for cull-free eggs among UK consumers and that more than half of consumers would be willing to pay more. Similar to the US, the average reported willingness-to-pay is many multiples of the actual added cost of using the technology for egg producers, indicating that there is a unique opportunity for a higher-margin category of egg that appeals to upmarket consumers. Additionally, the UK government’s official Animal Welfare Committee came out in favor of in-ovo sexing as a solution to the challenge of male chick culling in the UK egg industry, leaving many to ask whether this will be adopted as the official policy of the government.

Other Markets

There are a few other greenfield markets where the adoption of in-ovo sexing technology is likely in the coming years. The first of these is Brazil, where Innovate Animal Ag just released the first ever consumer survey on in-ovo sexing. The specialty egg market in Brazil has grown quickly over the last decade, and our survey findings suggest that there is a strong and growing business case for the technology to be deployed in the market. Another market of interest is Australia, where specialty egg production makes up a significant share of all eggs sold, and brands and retailers compete aggressively for shoppers conscious of animal welfare. Finally, the adoption of in-ovo sexing in Canada will likely be effected during the next update to the National Farm Animal Care Council’s Layer Code. Work on the updated code is set to begin by 2027 and the council is expected to incorporate in-ovo sexing technology into its standards.

Methodology

The purpose of this study wasis to understand the market penetration of in-ovo sexing globally by collecting data on the number of commercial laying hens currently in production that were sexed in-ovo as of March 31, 2025. 

Innovate Animal Ag asked each of the in-ovo sexing technology suppliers (AAT, In Ovo, Nectra, Orbem, PlantEgg, Omegga, and Respeggt) with active commercialized technology in the last 18 months how many in-ovo sexed hens were produced between October 1, 2023 and March 31, 2025 using their technology. These dates were selected because 18 months is the typical production cycle of a commercial layer in the EU. 

Data provided from the companies was aggregated and anonymized in order to mitigate any competitive sensitivity from publicly sharing data. Over 90% of the estimate was generated using this self-reported data. Some technology suppliers were unable to provide the data to the researchers for the purpose of this study, in which case, we estimated production data from publicly accessible press releases, KAT data, expert interviews, and hatchery production estimates. 

Some companies were only able to provide the number of hatching eggs their machines processed, and in these cases we applied a hatching egg to pullet ratio range of 2.45 to 2.8, based on a study by one in-ovo sexing technology provider. We also assumed an annual mortality rate of 5%, which works out to 7.5% for the 18 month assumed lifespan.