The 2019 season: Price for raw material_UPDATED

On 8 August, the CTGA (California Tomato Growers Association) announced that it has concluded price negotiations for processing tomatoes with all Californian processors. For ten of them, the reference price (including late-season premiums) has been fixed at USD 75/sT (about USD 83/mT) (see the CTGA bulletin linked to this article).

With this essential piece of information, the data available to date at the global level for the 2019 season indicates a very slightly downward pattern of the overall average price for raw materials (weighted, field gate), compared to the average reference price of 2018. Information is still lacking concerning a number of countries that play a major role in the worldwide industry, but the volumes to which this information refers – slightly more than 27.3 million metric tonnes – nonetheless account for almost three quarters of the current estimates of operations for the season.

In several major production areas, like China and in a large part of the Mediterranean rim (Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, etc.), prices for raw tomatoes have dropped to varying degrees; this downward trend is part of an almost generalized approach whereby operators have limited the volumes processed this year, despite the fact that the industry is reporting a notable reduction in carryover stocks. The only major exceptions are the reference price for Californian raw material which increase by about 2%, and Italian one, which is already the highest in the world, and has recorded an increase of 4 to 5% against 2018 prices both in the North and in the South Central region.