Dear Readers,
EXTRA BULLETIN
Not only South Africa suffered from night-frost at the wrong time but also Chile informed the market, late September, that the vine-yards were struck seriously by freezing weather. (The lowest temperatures since 80 years)
It is always dangerous and risky to broadcast such events too quickly, knowing from practice that sometimes the full impacts of bad luck are hard to figure out immediately because depending on the severeness, plants and trees sometimes get chances to recover, so that we should not yet go for the worst case scenario, although it seems this time, in Chile, to be very detrimental.
The same applies for S-Africa. There are meanwhile, rumours in the market that the damage of the night-frost, in most regions, is much bigger than made allowance for.
Anyhow, we are bound to take these warnings seriously.
With the strongly growing Chilean exports of fruit (dried or fresh), specially to Brasil and China, it will be a hard “bleeding” for the sector when significantly smaller crops will hamper these developments so that it is hard to believe that this origin will compete on the down-side of the market, to express ourselves mildly.
With also disappointing crops in Iran and specially Turkey, Californian dealers and packers shall eventually try to take advantage of this situation, although, we must state that, for the time being, California remains the cheapest supplier of Thompson raisins. (In this respect please see todya’s information in The Public Ledger or google also to Foodnews to find out abt prices for nr. 9 from Turkey and what impact that shall have on Californian prices.
Goldens,When we focus on goldens for next year, it will go without saying that given the fact that prices for goldens ended up, this season, close to those of the Thompsons, farmers will surely not opt for all the extra work and costs, if prices should not recover to more acceptable levels.