India has received its first and in some places its second round of rainfall by the time you read this email. So far, almost the whole country has been well covered and this is a good sign for an agrarian economy like ours.
The Indian summer crop of peanuts in Gujarat was not very large and although there are no specific numbers on the crop size, the general consensus is that it was about 175,000 mt and practically all of this was Java or Java Type as usual. Prior to this, earlier in the year we did have material from South India that was also a fairly decent quantity and catered to the Far East as well as domestic markets.
Demand for planting seed was quite low this season across the country compared to last year. This led to the stockists unloading material and this caused a correction in the markets last month. Once this selling pressure was out of the way, we saw markets retrace a large part of their fall. With oil crushing parity being very healty the local price for the splits from the processing factories is in the region of USD. 1160.00 pmt and all this goes into crush. Prices for the peanut cake are also quite firm.
On an all India basis, we have planted about 3.61 million hectares until last week as compared to 4.15 million hectares on the same dates last year so we have 0.5 million hectares less than 2020. This number can change quite easily as planting is planned by farmers looking at the rainfall. There is also some delay at times in data being received by the authorities. A clearer picture would emerge after about 2 – 3 weeks on exact planting numbers.
While we continue to make shipments to the Far East for mainly the Java and Java type, the export ot other destinations has been more of a challenge and a large part of this is due to the rising freight rates and a lack of containers even if one was ready to pay such exorbitant rates. As an example, main Europe ports which were available at USD. 800 – 1000 per teu pre covid are at USD. 4000 – 4500 per teu and counting. Russia has also moved from USD. 1200 to 4400 levels, as have other destinations. Luckily China pays fancy rates for out bound cargo so the shipping lines are happy to keep moving cargo into the Far East and onward to Chinese ports.
Availability of Bolds is rather limited and it is all old crop so the quality can work only for some destinations and not all. In any case prices are much higher than Argentina / Brazil currently. For the Java and Java type, supply is slow but at a price we are still able to offer from Summer crop.
Price levels FOB Mundra for Non- EU destinations –
Bolds
40/50 – USD. 1375.00 pmt
50/60 – USD. 1355.00 pmt
60/70 – USD. 1340.00 pmt
Java
50/60 – USD. 1385.00 pmt
60/70 – USD. 1375.00 pmt
80/90 – USD. 1370.00 pmt
Peanut oil with 2 FFA is in the region of USD. 1925.00 pmt fob, once again, costlier than Sudan, Brazil etc. There has been no serious demand from China in the last 3 months and it remains to be seen what they will do in the coming months. Rainfall in Henan, China last week and currently the cyclone In-Fa could possibly have some impact but we have no clear information on this yet.