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The harvesting of early oranges was almost over in most citrus producing regions of São Paulo State in late July. The last early fruit may be harvested until the first fortnight of August. The demand for the fruit from some processors was firm in that month. Many of them, especially the small-sized ones, were still crushing some volume of early oranges in that period, but the pear orange already amounted for half of the crushed fruit at the end of the month.
In July, the pear orange was traded in the spot market between 20.00 BRL and 21.00 BRL per box of 40.8 kilos, and the early oranges, at 18.00 BRL per box. For both types, values include harvesting and freight to the processor.
Despite the higher share of pear oranges in crushing, industrial yield was still below ideal for the period and lower than the historical average, according to Cepea collaborators. Agents said that the crop may end with an average yield of 280 boxes of orange for crushing one ton of juice, higher than that from the 2015/16 crop and similar to that from the 2013/14 season.
In late July, the higher demand, favored by the warmer weather, and the restrict supply in the in natura market pushed up pear orange prices. The average of that orange type in July was 20.18 BRL (6.17 USD) per 40.8-kilo box, on tree, 2.2% up compared to the average in June.
Regarding orange juice exports, the Brazilian 2015/16 year-crop finished in June/16, with shipments below those in the previous season. Despite the good exports performance to the European Union, the main purchaser of Brazilian juice, sales to the United States were still limited.
According to the Foreign Trade Secretariat (Secex), Brazil exported to all destinations 1.14 million tons of frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ) from July/15 to June/16, a drop of 3.8% compared to the 2014/15 season. Revenue was 1.83 billion USD, a sharp decrease of 13.6% in the same period – in Reais, the amount totaled 6.787 billion BRL, a rise of 19%. Different from expected, there was a sharp drop of orange juice exports to the United States.
Source: Hortifruti/Cepea
