“The theme of the week is unstable.”
This is what Steven Leal with S&J Distributing in Edinburg, TX says about the current lime market in which supplies coming in from Mexico look normal, if not up somewhat. “The past few weeks the industry had seen a decent amount of large fruits—a lot of 110, 150 counts,” says Leal. “We are getting rumblings that size is starting to shift small. It’s the start of the new crop being harvested. For the next two to three weeks, we’re going to see shifts from mostly big fruits to a decent amount of small 230, 250 size fruit. But overall, it’s still a pretty even manifest.”
Demand too seems to be steady, although Leal notes changes in one part of the country. “The Northeast last week, the market was a bit down and I think it was because of the Colombian and Guatemalan imports showing up, especially Colombian. Anytime Mexico gets really high in pricing, Colombia comes in and that slows things down a bit,” he says.
Supplies vs. pricing
That high pricing is what the instability issue seems to be centred around—namely that volumes incoming aren’t matching pricing. “Right now, there’s a definitive range in pricing between $40-$50—that’s a $10 range in pricing,” says Leal. “In the last couple of weeks, pricing has been opposite of your normal supply and demand pricing. Early last week Mexico’s pricing was higher than what the U.S. market was going for.” He adds though that by the end of last week, Mexican pricing also dropped but demand hadn’t changed in the U.S. “There’s a lot of pressure for higher price points and the U.S. market still hasn’t reached that. There’s fruit but there’s also instability throughout and no consensus over where the market is.”
It's a different pattern than what happened in February, which saw steady climbs in pricing. “But it’s been dramatic over the last two weeks. From this point in February to this date in March, you’re probably seeing a $20-$30 difference in price point. We have noticed a slight downward trend over the last couple days but we’re not sure if that’s going to continue through the weekend,” says Leal, adding that it’s not uncommon for March to see some of these price points.
However, where it goes from here is undetermined. “Is it going to hold at higher prices? Yes,” says Leal. “But I just don’t know where.”
For more information:
Steve Leal
S&J Distributing
Tel: +1-956-383-5325
steve@snjdistributing.com
www.snjdistributing.com