International hazelnut market from Oltan

Turkish market, demand, prices and trend. Quotation in Italy. Report of the 4/04/2016                

The market has been following the weather since early March: Upwards late March when warning of frost, then down for a week as the cold wave only made limited damage (5 to 7% of the crop maximum lost). Anyway, we will never know the number of the total loss because it concerns few gardens here and there in areas above 600m.

The weather forecast remains favorable as far as it is reliable. Therefore now we can consider that the frost is very low (it will be totally out mid-April). We expected last week an important price decrease because the forecast was good and the frost risk much reduced. This has not really been the case because the Turkish operators had been so much worried about the possible destruction of the crop by the cold wave of end of March that they have not reacted last week when that risk was away. So, unless radical change of weather, we can expect an easier market in the coming days.

Now we will have to wait until mid-May to begin counting the small fruits and get an idea of the size of the coming crop. Today we can only assume that it cannot be bad one since the bloom was average (flowers count gave a theoretical crop of 685 000t), and we had no real frost damage. And, even a below average crop (550 000t) would be sufficient given the anticipated carry of 120 to 150 000t. the June estimates will refine the crop size and in July and the Exporters Union counting will, as in the past, give the figure we must keep in mind until spring 2017.