•CASHEWS•
The price for cashew nut kernels remains high for whole kernels in store and on nearby shipments. Most of the packers from Vietnam and India are fully booked for the March and April shipments, caused by a limited quantity of RCN available forcing the processor to process on lower capacity. First new crop Raw Cashew Nuts from West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana and IVC) are bought and offered by traders at very high levels. Most of the Vietnamese processors are reluctant to book at these levels as the kernel buyers expecting the market to come down based on the actual crop forecasts for the Northern Hemisphere Crops. All in all a very interesting situation wherein buyers continue to buy kernels for their small term needs at high prices and prices expected to ease when sufficient RCN is coming into the market from April onwards.
Eastern Europe
As reported earlier, the demand for product from Eastern Europe remains concentrated on light quarters. The high demand for this industrial grade is pushing prices for raw material upwards, which further reduces the gap between the source price of light halves and light quarters. Since several packers do have light halves in stock, they are eager to sell at the current prices. The small group of packers whom do have some light quarters available, are currently offering their spot positions at a premium. No relief is expected for forward positions either, as packers will find a low availability of light quarters and high prices while sourcing new raw material.
USA
In the preamble to the 2017 season, there has been a lot of discussion about the total Californian crop and the price (increase) that would come along with it. After the actual start of the season, a lower than anticipated demand from two important markets, China and Turkey, was found.
Although this leak in demand seems to be more or less covered by good sales to Europe and stable offset to most other regions, is the year to date amount of remaining product almost equal to 2016 now. The shortage of product as quoted during the beginning of the season, is therefor theoretically vanished. These figures, in combination with the potentially large crop in 2018, might encourage Californian packers to boost their sales. A firm increase is therefor not expected, we advise to follow the market closely and handle a wait and see attitude for forward demands.
•MACADAMIAS•
South Africa
In a certain region (Alkmaar, Schagen and Brondal) in South Africa a big hailstorm destroyed 30-40% of the crop. We hope this is only an incident, but with the drought and the cyclone Debbie still fresh in our memories we don’t want to get over-excited yet.
Australia
Difficulties with the Australian harvest. A small productuction to attend the needs of the growing markets of Asia (China, Taiwan and South Korea)
Kenya and Malawi
With the season being over and only very little product available we started to focus on 2018 crop. The first crop to come is from Kenya and some volume from Malawi. Most of the Malawi product seems to be committed. Also from Kenya coverage is taking place, but it is a very risky operation for the processor. The last couple of years competition has been extremely fierce (new factories + Chinese buyers) making it very difficult to get their volumes and if so at increasing prices throughout the season. The question obviously is whether this is likely to happen in 2018 again. One thing is clear is that it makes processors more reluctant to offer as they don’t want to make a loss.
Sourse: http://www.globaltrading.nl/