A week ago the harvest-campaign in South Africa has really begun.

Every day the farmers are bringing in more and more material and as it looks today one can speak about a very good crop, to put it mildly.

For accurate figures it is far too early but to expect a crop of 60.000 tons (plus)  has nothing to do with exaggeration

As we have said before; together with the carry-over of last year there should be more than enough raisins around.

With the knowledge that recession, on one side and little growth of consumption, worldwide, on the other side, is still at stake and competing suppliers in various countries are also on the hunt to find buyers for their merchandise, it is not so difficult to predict that the raisin-market is not in a situation to expect higher price-levels. The contrary comes first, we are afraid.

Although the competition shall be stronger for “brownish” and darker type of raisins, the goldens shall also meet resistance from buyers, when it comes to pricing.

It is no secret when we say that, generally speaking, the first two and a half months shall be needed to fulfill contracts for Ramadan, so that prices for goldens, during that period, shall not decrease anylonger.

How the situation shall be in may/june and onwards for Thompsons and Goldens is hard to say but as we lifted the veil already a bit, our expectations are not overwhelming, as far as prices are concerned.

To make things more complicated: despite the higher field-prices which were asked in the USA, the Californian exports from August to the end of December 2014 were only one percent less to those of the year 2013.

That is to say from 149.901 during August/December 2013 to 148.398 tons  from August to 31 December 2014, which, in fact, is neglectable.

If the rumours are there that Iran is asking around USD 3000.- for their golden mediums and California is still above USD 2400,- for their Thompsons,  it is getting more complicated to read the market for the summer-months properly.