Market Update – End September 2021

Positions are now sold out until January 2022, with raw material prices continuing to climb, on top of record-high shipping costs, which means coconut is at an all-time ‘eye-watering’ high. Long term, this could cause manufacturers to look at alternatives to coconut – but most ‘alternatives’ are in the same boat, pun intended!

It’s unlikely there will be any surplus stock for the rest of the year, and 2022 is looking busy.

COVID restrictions are still hampering production in the Philippine factories. However, things are steady, and output is much better than earlier in the year.

However, the Philippines is still in the middle of a COVID crisis. “The Philippines fell to the bottom of Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking this month, making it the worst place to be during the pandemic among 53 countries tracked”.  The UK is at position 16; the USA is at 28 and Ireland is number one.

The typhoon season is beginning in the Philippines, and some delays may inevitably happen.

We also see delays with getting shipments booked in with brokers and handlers, with many having no availability.

The worldwide shipping challenge, as we like to call it, continues with a different news story every couple of days, some positive, some negative. It’s hard to get an idea of any future trends, Sea-Intelligence’s latest figures show that schedule reliability dropped to 33.6% in August, an all-time low & “the upcoming contracting season can be the toughest in ocean freight history for shippers”, states project44 in its latest market report.

As with the previous market reports, our advice is to get your orders in as soon as possible; holding out for better rates has proved to be a poor strategy.