Coconut supplies to the US could be even tighter post-hurricanes
“We won’t know how the supply of coconuts is until later this week because of all the hurricanes that are going on,” says Emil Serafino of New Jersey-based Exp. Group LLC. “We grow in a rural area in the Dominican, it’s mostly grown wild and we’re not sure how supply is. It could be tighter. There may be no coconuts left.”
Coconuts from the Dominican Republic, where Serafino prefers to source them, have already been tight on supply for a while. At the same time, coconuts as a commodity have increased in popularity.
Demand continues to go up
“The demand for coconuts is changing,” says Serafino. “There’s more and more use for them but the supply gets less and less.” Serafino says it can’t turn to other regions for coconuts either. “There’s not enough production out of Mexico and there’s very little production out of Costa Rica. Those are the other two places we could go to, although the Dominican has the best coconuts.”
While Serafino does have a supply on hand that arrived this week, it’s a bit of a ‘never have enough supply’ situation. “This has happened before and you deal with the shortages until the coconuts come back,” he says. “You try to buy from other places but it’s never the same.”
And while the short supply could push prices up, there is a threshold. “Prices can only go up so much,” he says “And they’re already at very high prices now. I just don’t know how much more they can go up.”
For more information:
Emil Serafino
Exp. Group LLC.
Tel: +1-(201) 662-2001
emil@expgroup.us
www.expgroup.us/