Pepper market
Following our newsletter 17/08 of the 5/12/08, in which we reported the estimates of the current year’s crops officially communicated by the various member countries of the IPC (association of pepper producers) during the last international meeting in Vietnam.
In January we saw a slight increase in prices due essentially to a temporary contraction in the availability of raw materials.
In fact, Brazil sold a good part of its harvest (that is from August to November);
India is at the beginning of the harvest with good demand from the domestic market (which consumes about 90% of the product) and to follow Vietnam will start harvesting from March onwards.
It is interesting to note that buyers do not have good coverage and they only buy when in need, thus not creating substantial product requests.
Without international speculators, following the liquidity crisis that has characterized all the stock exchanges in the world, the product remains almost stable in the short term.
However, we must point out that the prices of pepper on the stock exchange are slightly declining for embarkation in the months ahead (March-April-May); this is the proof of a crop that meets the expectations and a request, at least for the moment, not able to increase prices.
Under these conditions, we seem to be able to confirm that prices for the first half will be stable, tending to decline, thus not motivating any need to cover consumption for the year.
We would like to suggest, under these conditions, given the reasonable levels of today’s prices, not to remain uncovered in search of saving a few cents, but to have a cover of up to three months in advance that allows us to have no surprises in case of a sudden change in trend and at the same time allow confirmation of a tendential reduction in prices.
