Orange juice is currently in short supply 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 declining stocks of orange juice concentrate in Brazil, the most important supplier country, VdF Managing Director Klaus Heitlinger told the German Press Agency.
On the commodity futures exchange in the USA, orange juice concentrate is currently trading at historic highs. For the pound (453.6 grams) of frozen orange juice for delivery in July, around 2.55 dollars were last paid. This means that the price has fallen noticeably again in the past three weeks. It had previously reached $2.83. Nevertheless, orange juice is expensive: the two dollar mark was only exceeded in 2007 for the first time since 1982.
Plant disease affects production
"Goods are scarce and the cost of raw materials is rising. This means that consumers must also be prepared for the fact that orange juice will become more expensive," said Heitlinger. He is not alone in this assessment. The head of the Mönchengladbach-based juice manufacturer Valensina, Tino Mocken, also 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.
It is true that Valensina has largely secured its own ability to deliver for the current year through long-term contracts. However, larger additional orders could not be served. "In the market as a whole, there is therefore a threat of bottlenecks and delivery failures in the summer – and further price increases," the newspaper wrote.
According to the latest market report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, global orange production in the 2022/23 marketing year is expected to be 5 percent below the previous year's level. The slumps are particularly severe in the USA, where production is likely to fall to its lowest level in more than 56 years, 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 harvest volumes. But also in Brazil, the largest producer of oranges, and in Europe, bad weather has had a negative impact on harvest volumes.
According to estimates by the US Department, global orange juice production is likely to fall by as much as 7 percent. Stocks of orange juice concentrates in Brazil, where 90 percent of EU imports come from, are lower than ever before.
With a per capita consumption of 28 litres of fruit juice and fruit nectar, consumers in Germany are world champions in fruit juice consumption, according to the VdF, and orange juice has always been their favourite in recent years. Currently, Germans pay an average of 1.944 dollars or 1.79 euros for a liter bottle. Internationally, this ranks 44th out of 81 countries and thus in the middle of the field. The cheapest orange juice is in Egypt at $0.55, while in Bangladesh you pay top prices at $5.17. Within Europe, the Danes are asked to pay the most with 4.37 dollars (2nd place globally), whereas the British only have to spend 1.19 dollars per liter for their breakfast juice.