US: Prices of imported coconuts spike

“The supply of coconuts has been bad and I’m not sure what the reason is,” says Amador Sanchez of Miami, Fl.-based A.R. Produce and Trucking Corp., who does both water and dry coconuts. “Perhaps the Dominican Republic doesn’t have enough coconuts. We don’t use Dominican coconuts--we use Costa Rican coconuts. But prices are lower when there are a lot of Dominican coconuts around and prices aren’t low right now.” While Sanchez sees coconuts coming from Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, he occasionally has seen them imported from less likely regions such as Nicaragua and even Guyana.

Prices heading up
Sanchez notes that the prices are currently spiking. “A few weeks ago, we were selling coconuts for $22-$24 FOB and right now it’s gone up to about $30 FOB,” he says. “These last few years, coconuts have seen the prices go higher at some periods in the year. And then they go extremely high—I’ve heard them as high as $38 FOB.”

Part of that could be due to a pressing global demand for coconuts. “We get a container in and it’s gone in a matter of hours,” he says. “Our grower in Costa Rica thinks there will be a shortage soon because the demand is so high and they’ve picked so much already. At one point we were getting two containers a week of coconuts and right now we’re down to 10 pallets.

For more information:
Amador Sanchez
A.R. Produce and Trucking Corp.
Tel: +1 786-351-7762
asanchez@arproduce.us