Dear Readers,
Maybe you remember what we have said in our last report:……. as long as a crop is not under the roof anything can happen…….
Now we know how true such expression can be.
Having been through the fields in S-Africa, a few things become very clear: the crop is late and the crop shall be much and much smaller than expected to be.
Too much rain at the wrong moments and at the wrong places held up the crop to a maximum and made, by the same token, a lot of farmers decide to make Thompsons or W.P.’s rather than goldens.
In other words the simple establishment is that there shall be a lot less of goldens (logically also a lot less of jumbos) and there shall clearly be more tonnage in the market of Thompsons.
The fact that there are still quite a lot of farmers who have to start cutting their bunches on the vines, means that there is still no posssibility to give an exact image of what the final outcome shall be.
Once again: the crop will surely be disapponting, with surely less goldens.
It will only be by the end of march that we have a good sight on what the crop-situation, really shall be.
Speaking generally and specially about Thompsons or Thompson-like raisins, we can say the following: with the knowledge that the crop in Chile will neither be an enormous one and the knowledge that Turkey could still be aware of possible nightfrost while the buds got to life already and California still does not know where the water should come from if the necessary rain stays away, one can be sure that there is no room, in whatever way, that we can expect lower prices.
Speaking about goldens: one can be sure that these prices are going firmer.
Summarizing: the forecast could be that 2014 shall, obviously.not become the best raisin year ever as far as total availability of merchandise is concerned.
Where, so far demand and supply (overall) were, more or less, in balance, we hopefully should not enter into some serious problems, as indicated above which could change patterns drastically .
more later……