2023-05-17 11:09:21
Orangensaft is currently scarcer worldwide than it has been for a long time due to poor harvests. According to the Association of the German Fruit Juice Industry (VdF), consumers in Germany will therefore have to prepare for price increases in the coming months.
The industry is suffering from poor harvests in numerous regions and falling stocks of orange juice concentrate in the most important supplier country, Brazil, said VdF Managing Director Klaus Heitlinger of the German Press Agency.
Orange juice concentrate is currently trading at historic highs on the commodity futures exchange in the USA. A pound (453.6 grams) of frozen orange juice for delivery in July was last paid around $2.55. This means that the price has fallen noticeably again in the past three weeks. It had previously reached $2.83. Nonetheless, orange juice is expensive: the two-dollar mark was only exceeded in 2007 for the first time since 1982.
Plant disease affects production
“The goods are scarce and the raw material costs are rising. This means that consumers must also be prepared for orange juice to become more expensive,” said Heitlinger. He is not alone in this assessment. The boss of the Mönchengladbach juice manufacturer Valensina, Tino Mocken, recently painted a gloomy picture of the situation in an interview with the industry journal “Lebensmittel Zeitung”. Not only are the prices high, there is currently nothing to buy.
Valensina has largely secured its own ability to deliver for the current year through long-term contracts. However, larger additional orders cannot be served. “Bottlenecks and delivery failures are therefore threatening the overall market in the summer – and further price increases,” wrote the newspaper.
According to the latest market report from the US Department of Agriculture, global orange production in the 2022/23 marketing year is likely to be 5 percent below the previous year’s level. The slumps in the USA, where production is likely to fall to its lowest level in more than 56 years, are particularly severe, the experts predicted. The main reasons for this are the spread of a plant disease – the so-called citrus greening – and the effects of hurricanes on the harvest volumes. But also in Brazil, the largest producer of oranges, and in Europe, bad weather had a negative impact on harvest volumes.
According to estimates by the US Department, global orange juice production is likely to fall by 7 percent. The stocks of orange juice concentrates in Brazil, from where 90 percent of EU imports come, are lower than ever before.
With a per capita consumption of 28 liters of fruit juice and fruit nectar, according to the VdF, consumers in Germany are world champions when it comes to fruit juice consumption and their favorite in recent years has always been orange juice. Germans currently pay an average of 1.944 dollars or 1.79 euros for a liter bottle. Internationally, it is 44th out of 81 countries and thus midfield. Orange juice is cheapest in Egypt at $0.55, while Bangladesh tops the price at $5.17. Within Europe, the Danes are asked to pay the most at $4.37 (second place globally), while the British only have to pay $1.19 per liter for their breakfast juice.
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