Dossier: The Architecture of Global Trade in 2016-2017

Among the three main product categories, exports of sauces seem to have done better than other categories at resisting the slowdown in dynamics. The development of global exports for this kind of product has been practically linear over the past 20 years, at an average annual rate of close on 5.9%. In 2016/2017, worldwide exports of sauces shifted 1.35 million tonnes of finished products, or the processed equivalent of close on 3.9 million tonnes of raw tomato.
Canned tomato exports not only progressed at a slower rate but also shifted far smaller quantities than the other two categories. Over the most recent marketing year (2016/2017), the global trade in canned tomatoes shifted 1.64 million tonnes of finished products, or approximately 2.1 million mT of raw tomato. Furthermore, growth dynamics in the trade of canned tomatoes have noticeably slowed over the past five marketing years, dropping from an annual 3.5% approximately for the period running 1997/1998-2011/2012, to only 1.8% today.
The paste category is the one that has suffered most from the crisis affecting the international trade in tomato products over the past five or six years. Over the very difficult seasons that followed the excessive production of 2009, the fast pace of growth in trade that the industry had known previously progressively gave way to slower and slower annual progression. Between 2011/2012 and 2016/2017, the volumes of paste exported around the world only increased by 150 000 mT of finished products, whereas they had grown by more than 718 million tonnes over the five years preceding 2011/2012. In the end, average annual growth for the past five marketing years has barely cleared 0.5%. Last year, the volumes of paste shipped between countries around the world amounted to 3.205 million mT of finished products.

For these 15 supplier countries, the volumes exported were practically identical in 2016/2017 (+0.3%) to what they had been the previous year (2015/2016). This lack of growth at the worldwide level is the result of a slowdown in trade in a number of importing regions (West Africa, Turkey, Emirates, Southern Africa, EU13, etc.) that has been barely compensated by a limited number of significant increases: North Africa, Andean America, Far East.

Over the past marketing year, the quantities of canned tomatoes traded at a worldwide level only progressed by 1% (16 700 mT) compared to the previous year. In the context of the very particular supply pattern for worldwide trade in this category, the variations have a considerable impact on a restricted number of destinations: in 2016/2017, the EU28 was the only one of the 26 regions considered whose total purchases significantly dropped against the previous marketing year (-10 400 mT). This contraction directly impacted the two leading countries for this market – Italy and Spain – and in a way that is all the more noticeable for the fact that this drop coincided with a slight shift of purchases towards other competing sources (Portugal and the Netherlands). In the final count, Spain and Greece (to a lesser extent) have paid the price for the market downturn in Europe, while Italy has improved its performance thanks to an exceptional increase in Argentinian purchases of canned tomatoes (see our article on the difficulties of competition in Argentina published in the March 2018 issue) and an increase in US imports. As for US operators, they benefited from a notable increase in Canadian purchases.