Cashews
Obviously new crop is in, the Tet holiday is winding down
and shipments will start to flow, but currently most importers are short on
product, anticipating a price reduction to the market most have waited and
hence find themselves in this predicament. We strongly advise that you book 1st
QTR needs, we don’t think prices will start to move down till April sometime
and that means shipments arriving in May, also something to be aware of, with
the trouble on the West Coast ports, more and more shipments are being diverted
to the East Coast and that could also be a factor in delaying arrival. We also
don’t think we will see a price drop in the pieces market due to the
advancement of cracking machinery reducing the amount of breakage to 15% down
from almost 33%.
Almonds
Even though we hear about damage to the trees due to the 5th
year of the drought and the lack of El Nino again, we think the farmers know
they have to tread a very careful line. Prices are at a record high and while
domestic sales have been robust, sales to Europe have slowed, now this could
still be the issues with the port or a more systemic problem. With that in mind
the Almond farmers have been acting very responsibly and don’t want the pricing
to keep going up because they feel the market is comfortable at this level. We
also await the bloom report and this month shipment report, post that we could
see this market go either way and a bad subjective report would spike prices
even beyond the control of the farmers.
Pecans
This commodity has had an all-time record high movement in
pricing and all we said from our past reports have come to be, now we are
seeing a quieter time for pecans, not a lull per say but pecans meteoric price
increase has slowed, saying that if China now post its new year’s comes in
heavy again then the price is likely to continue to spike higher. Also to be
remembered, it hasn’t been a very large crop.
