Covid market update: Star Anise, Allspice

COVID-19 effects are finally dissipating as most of the world is in a recovery mode and lockdowns in producing nations have all begun to end. While pricing has gone up dramatically for a few ingredients, in general pricing is starting to come down for Indian spices as well as dry fruits and nuts from the US. 

Extremely poor harvesting during spring crop has made Star Anise's autumn crop very expensive and all old batch (low priced) goods are quickly getting bought up. Unfortunately due to Covid-19, this problem was unavoidable as most of China was in lockdown during most of the key harvest months. Star Anise is harvested only twice a year, so we expect pricing to stay rather high until around April next year.

Allspice crop has started booming, and we suspect it's due to gradual increased popularity of the spice around the world. With a rise of veganism, and increased consumption of Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern cuisine where allspice is heavily featured as a flavouring spice, this crop is rising in popularity. For the time being, pricing is a little lower than last year, but we expect this to start changing quite soon.