Spice Trade — market news

Grains and superseeds such as Chia, Flaxseed, Sesame Seeds have all been hiking up for the last two months, nearly all producers are all having their own unique problems ranging from severe inflation in Canada/India/China, to weather problems in Peru/Argentina resulting in crop failure of 30-40% and cost rises of 5-10%. These seeds don't grow easily and a replacement supply origin cannot cover the demand of the whole world. Prices are declining for some nuts: walnuts, pecans have dropped 10-15% as new crops from Chile, Mexico and Argentina are entering the market. There are also big supply issues for mediterranean herbs...

Chipotle Chilli pricing has started shooting up and supplies are short all throughout the world - producing regions in Latin America have all been suffering tremendously under covid, and lockdowns sporadically coming on-off aren't doing supply any favours.     Madagascar Vanilla supply is ever so slowly finally coming back to the good old days. We have heard news from our growers that good quality mature crop is finally coming onto the market, 4-5 gram beans as we used to supply years ago. Pricing is still very high but expected to come down in a few months as the new crop arrivals...

COVID-19 repercussions are now finally starting to stabilize: all of our supplier's are back to normal production, most lockdowns in the world are now over / planned... the only problem is the massive hike in shipping / freight charges, which have resulted in a huge spike in food costs around the world, spices not being much of an exception. Whereas we used to pay an average of around HKD10,000 for shipping a container across the world for years, recently this has become closer to HKD30,000 for the same thing (coming to HK) and we consider ourselves lucky... outbound containers from...

COVID-19 effects have started to wane - with the world starting to get vaccinated, and most governments easing up lockdown restrictions, work has started to resume in our industry.   Ceylon Cinnamon pricing is down severely - like most luxury items, demand is short, and sellers are keen to offload goods. At the same time, more unscrupulous sellers have started trying to ship inferior quality ceylon cinnamon (near tasteless sticks) after extracting out flavours. It is a new challenge in a marketplace that once used to have very high ethical standards.    Paprika, Garlic, Sesame and other chinese products prices are on the rise. With chinese...

COVID-19 effects have now begun to affect international shipping lines - reports are that between 400,000-500,000 sailors have been stranded due to COVID-19. Either having caught the virus, or due to original lack of cargo leaving them stranded on another location, or problems at their country of origin / ports of transit not letting them disembark, and later a huge need for goods like masks and protective equipment shipping out of China... as a result there is now a severe lack of ships for transportation of goods between the rest of world, and prices for shipping have increased TENFOLD since...