Mangoes in Charts: Putting Peru’s grower strike in context with South America’s market evolution

As news of strikes from Peruvian mango producers starts to appear, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at how the markets have evolved and try to offer a bit of context to what is going on. This article is a bit of a follow up to a previous article about mangoes, which you can take a look at (here). First and foremost, I know the chart below is pretty busy with a lot of variability, but I think it illustrates what’s going on in the market pretty well.

You can see that from 2010-2015 the industry saw a good amount of growth in volume amid rising prices. However, in 2016, the biggest year in volume we have seen so far, the prices leveled out considerably, changing the landscape for the industry. South America, represented by Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, have been the protagonists of the winter months and the driving force behind this change.

Zooming into South America’s data, we can appreciate the massive amounts of growth all three origins have experienced, which have led to the normalization of the markets.

Following up on reports of the strike, we can see from the historic data that the shipments registered by the USDA weeks 41-44 were particularly high and a bit reminiscent of 2016.

The consequence was a price to match during the same weeks. As volumes have let up over the last three weeks, prices have risen accordingly.

As the few Peruvian companies that are exporting are already competing directly with Ecuador, there isn’t much they can do about current market conditions. With a drop in expected volume this year, it looks like prices could yet be quite high for Peru this season yet. Even today, spot market pricing looks like it’s being as generous as last year.

Written by: Colin Fain
Original published in FreshFruitPortal.com on December 04 , 2018 (Link)

*To view historics click on this icon in the table. In the historics report you can change viewing to reflect seasons that cross New Years.