Lime Update
The 21 day Mexican Lime Crossings Chart below shows a volatile supply volume going from 703 loads down to 480 loads and back up to 626 loads the last 7 days. There have been rains over the past week in the lime growing regions which is good news for the drought weakened trees and this will help strengthen the crop to come in December. Sizing is getting a little better with the peak moving from 230/250 to 200/230. Demand seams steady. We expect about 2 more weeks of 500 – 600 loads of lime crossing from Mexico per week before the dip in production that we have been talking about Mid-October through November really hits and where we expect the volumes to drop significantly lower. The market is wide ranging on price just like the quality ranges greatly by packer. With a weaker quality crop it pays to go with the shippers that really invest the time and expense into precooling the fruit very well after packing before loading it onto trucks. Limes that are properly stabilized after packing have a greatly increased shelf life and present fewer problems down the road. This is what we strive to do, to not give quality and condition headaches to customers.
The number of stores on ad on limes rose from 256 last week to 33 stores for the week ending 10/3 at an average retail price of $0.33 per unit. There were also 81 stores on ad by the pound at an average price of $0.78 per pound. There were zero stores on an organic lime ads according to the USDA specialty crop market news survey of more than 400 retailers.
Mango Crop Update
We are in week 40 now. Most packers in Northern Sinaloa, Mexico shut down last week but there will continue to be crossings and inventory of Jumbo Keitt mangos available for another couple of weeks. Brazil is now entering the peak arrival phase of their season which will be the entire month of October. The market was very undersupplied on sizes 8s, 9s, 10s, 12s for the past two weeks but with the last vessel we got some of these regular chain store size mangos into the pipeline and now we have the peak vessel of the season about to hit this Friday, so we will be stable with plenty of supplies the rest of the month. We can do volume ads on sizes 7s, 8s, 9s, 10s all of October. We need ads on size 6s/7s/8s as soon as possible. Size 12s have not been very prevalent so far running only 6.03% of our manifests as you can see in the Brazil Mango Size Breakdown Chart below.
We have a small volume of Palmer and Keitt mango from Brazil for those interested in a premium eating experience or differentiation from Tommy Atkins variety. Organic mangos are in a gap now between Mexico and Ecuador. Brazil does not export organic mango to the USA so the only organics available are California Keitts which are basically committed as we understand. Ecuador’s first organic Tommy should arrive week 44.
We have updated projections for Ecuador in the Arrival Volume Chart below. These new projection have an earlier ramp up than they projected last week which is good news as the supply forecast looks better for early November than our chart last week. Loading in week 47 looks to be the start of peak arrivals from Ecuador so we would like to run big promotions for loading weeks 47 – 52. Ataulfos have started arriving from Ecuador. Be careful as they might be immature. Our growers are starting to pick now so we should have the first mature Ataulfos arriving in week 42.
Stores on ad on conventional mangos rose from 1,884 stores to 3,464 stores on ad for the week ending 10/3. Weighted average retail price was $1.11 per piece. Stores on organic mango ads fell from 100 last week to 32 stores this week with an average retail price of $3.15 each. See the USDA Data on Retail Mango Ads chart below for detailed data by geographic region of the country.
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