Dear Readers,
Inspiring raisin-news, which could have its influence in the market and on prices either side, can no longer come from South Africa.
As we reported earlier already, the total crop is in the warehouses and partly already on its way to the final buyers. Due to the very good crop (over 50.000 tons) there are still enough unsold raisins available but unfortunately the enquiries are mostly for the larger types and the trouble is that these types are hardly available.
For possible new incentives we have to wait for the final results of the Chilean crop and later in the year for the crops from Turkey and California.
As far as Chile is concerned it is no secret to make the statement meanwhile that the crop is small and that there are no or hardly any jumbo raisins available. Under these circumstances we expect that prices for the latter will remain high for the rest of the year.
That means that eventually buyers, who exclusively buy Jumbos, have to accept bolds (if any) or just medium thompsons because leaving the final consumer without a product is no option.
In this respect is waiting for Turkey or California no option either since these countries do not grow or deliver any serious quantities of jumbo/bold type raisins.
Summarizing: the market is without jumbo type raisins and as a consequence prices shall remain high for these types and will be reason that prices in general will not have much chance to come down forcely.
The very volatile Rand towards the Dollar is also a very unreliable factor when it comes to pricing in the month to come.
In our opinion, only a huge crop, in both California and Turkey, can bring an end to the very high levels which we have seen developing during the last couple of years.
