Updates from Our Friends

Our friends at REMA FOODS give this snap-shot report to the markets. Check it out.

Market Notes from REMA

More Saffron and Corrections

We have found some Spanish Buyers who are replacing at the 3500 EUROS per kilo level. So that needs to be clarified...

Also, we are told and have confirmed that there is a speculative fever involved in the markets with buyers in the Emirates, and elsewhere taking positions and holding product... Why? Anyone can guess... Your guess will be as good as mine.

What other sources are there for saffron: Well there is Morocco but quality and culture make it very hard to get anything that we could use... Kashmir is already short and vastly higher in price even yet...

The new possibility will be Afghanistan! Change your Poppies to Saffron! Quality has been said to be good but problems in export are large.

Anybody want to switch to powders? We are looking at this again...

Saffron Prices Soar

While we had hoped that the Saffron Market would loosen up, we advised last year that the high prices we were seeing may be the best of what was to come...

Boy we were right. The market has ROCKETED up from the first of the year. Here is what we are told so far:

Last crop (Fall 2008) was forecasted short 40% and was that and shorter!

Prices have gone up in non stop increase since early 2006. Looks to have accelerated.

Current price for raw saffron euros 3500 per kilo. .... This is a figure never seen before in all the collective years of all of us!

Spain has stopped importing saffron [or is preparing to do so] as the market seems not to be ready to accept prices figured out at such raw material level. Though who knows...

Limited inventories at Blue Planet Foods requires an immediate advance in prices upwards of 75%... Please check with us for specifics.

More when more is available.

When People are Heros!

What Goes Around Comes back to Haunt

When the US $ was so very weak last year, many importers switched from solid producers of such things as Artichokes and Olives to move to what they thought was less expensive alternatives.

For example, Ripe Olives from EGYPT (collapsed as there were tremendous rejections by USDA) to Artichokes from Peru (collapsed from Non-Delivery)...

So then they try to jump back into the Spanish scene as if nothing happened...

But things happened.

Companies sold elsewhere and remembered being left for dead by buyers...

We all know that price is driven by demand... but rarely do people remember the all important PRICE-QUALITY ratio...

Cliches like "you get what you pay for" come to mind. But it is more than that. Our business's need product of solid consistent quality... Low price is only one component of many...

BTW, this year looks to be pretty challenging... Did you notice?

All the best in 2009 starting with HEALTH... then quality of life... All else follows....