Spice Trade — market news

Dried Onion is a funny commodity. It’s one of the most popular spices, as it’s a staple of just about every cuisine, and produced in huge quantities all across the world. Yet, every time onion crop arrives, prices are all over the place. Onion farmers know their product is in demand, and so are unwilling to be the ones to start negotations. Buyers know when production is ongoing and harvesting has started, so they don’t want to start talks either. The rule is straightforward: he who starts the talks, has the worse side of the bargain. After the first big...

Garlic is one of the fundamental spices (strictly speaking a dehydrated vegetable) in the trade. As such, it is trading on many commodity indexes and usually fluctuates in price far more than exotics. This season we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in the price of garlic never seen in the past. European standard quality garlic granules have shot up in price over 50% since December 2015, and standard quality garlic flakes higher almost 60%! Prices had already risen 30-40% since the season prior to that… making the net increase almost 100% in total. The reason? a huge shortage in garlic supply. We’ve noticed...

Basic background of nutmeg production in the world India and Indonesia, the two largest producers for Nutmeg in the world, both claim that this season Nutmeg crop has been severely damaged by El Niño. Indian production is general consumed within India, leaving Indonesia as the world’s largest exporter for the spice. Thus problems with Indonesian crop usually mean large pressures on Nutmeg sellers around the world. El Niño’s impact on Nutmeg and Mace farming El Niño is the natural phenomenon associated with a band of extra warm ocean waters, and accompanied by changes in air pressure. It’s unpredictable, and occurs every few...

This article has been updated on 28/7/15 with updated knowledge. Hong Kong currently does not have any piece of regulation specifically for organic food. Yes, even though food can be labelled and sold as Organic in Hong Kong, the FEHD has not made any hard and fast rule saying what actually counts as organic. We do have some general guidelines, although these too are vague, and easy to get around. Bearing in mind these guidelines are constantly prefaced by words such as “usually” and “generally”, as we do not have any rules. – Avoiding the use of chemical pesticide and fertilizers– Avoiding growth...