The Almond Board of California has released Almond Position Report May 2018. You can download the full report (pdf) here.
We see that new sales on May 2018 are only at 76 million pounds – which was 144 million pounds last year. Total sales are over 810 million pounds versus 209 million pounds last year on May, meaning that only 3.5% of the new crop has been sold. Almond shipments for May 2018 were down 7.3% and year to date shipments are up 10.24% compared to previous year.
The reason of these slow sales is buyers are not comfortable to take long positions for new crop due to political situations (Trade War between USA and China – on April, China increased import duty to 15% for Almonds). Buyers being cautious with the possibility that market prices can go lower if we see shipment and sales numbers continue to fall on June as well. As the Objective Estimate will be released on July 5th and June Position Report on July 12th, we’ll see how these new figures will affect prices in the almond market.
Objective Crop Estimate is expected not to be lower than 2.4 billion pounds as many of the buyers did not accept Subjective Crop estimate which announced as 2.3 billion pounds.
Numbers at a glance:
Domestic Shipments: 66 million lbs (+13.1%)
Export Shipments: 92 million lbs (-17.9%)
Total Shipments: 158 million lbs (-7.3%)
Year to Date Shipments: 1.95 billion lbs (+10.24)
New Sales (Commitments) on May 2018: 76.1 million lbs (-47%)
Expected Objective Crop Estimate: 2.4 billion lbs
If you need more information or have demands for California or Spanish / Italian Almonds or any other products we supply, please feel free to call or email us.