Dear Readers.
Time flies is the expression!!
You won’t believe it but Anuga is alreadfy a week behind us.
It was good to see many friends and clients again and to have a chat about raisins in general and South Africa in particular.
Most buyers/visitors realize that South Africa is sold out meanwhile but everybody wishes to follow the latest conditions of the upcoming crop, which will be probably at hand near the last days of december resp. january and onwards until the end of march.
Like, traditionally, every year we will go into the vineyards ourselves during november and in a later edition we will surely tell you what we have seen with our own eyes.
Sofar the upcoming crop in South Africa is pretty good and let’s hope the weather will stay favorable until the new crop is in the barn.
On the other hand we should not forget that market- resp. pricewise, South Africa will not have that much influence since it will only be a crop of 60.0000 ((on the downside and 65.000 tons on the upside.
Let us not forget that although the US has a smaller crop this season, still Turkey and the USA are ruling the market with (together) abt 550/600.000 tons.
On top of that, countries like India, Iran,Chile ,China and many others are another, undeniable factor in the market. One thing we can be sure about in this respect: once the balance between supply and demand will be disturbed, prices will follow an opposite direction.
Therefore, although California is logically firmer. those buyers who wish bulk can still opt for Turkey because, prices remained, through the year, pretty low and besides that, the currency is not against the buyers
more later…..