Beesource Beekeeping Forums banner

Bulk honey prices and market outlook

824K views 1K replies 169 participants last post by  The Honey Householder 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Deflation , then inflation and currently a whole bunch of de-leaverageing going on in this crazy economy, which I hear from the majority with crystal balls, that is only going to get worse as a recession or a depression .
Heard some packers had dropped their offering prices......... hadn't noticed any downward pricing going on the store shelf's,to the contrary , prices were actually going up there.
A Canadian honey broker recently had a offer out for 1.50 Canadian,picked up in your yard, drums lost , for 10 loads, alot of phone calls later the order was filled and she is working on another order for the same price,I hear. Canadian dollar was trading around 1.25 US. That may be GOOD PRICE at present market conditions........ but I doubt it.I don't think supply and demand have entered the big picture yet.Other Current Canadian offers were 1.40. UK honey is selling at up to £2.30 per pound in BULK- source Bee -L.
Maybe that supply and demand won't enter the pic if the packers get there way.

I must remind myself that honey is not one of those necessity foods like bread and milk and that I don't need to be quite as greedy as some of those wall street folks
 
#542 ·
A good indicator of the current state of the US economy can be found here
http://www.ceridianindex.com

As honey producers are also traders when they convert honey to money,( and the exchange rate is quite often not good ) some interesting comments on trading can be found at

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/ see remarks by Ben Davies,
CEO, Hinde Capital, London


No, there is nothing certain about economic predictions. Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. defense secretary, unwittingly declared it so at a NATO press conference in 2002, when he responded to a question on intelligence gathering:

"It's not the certainties that make life interesting; it's the uncertainties. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the things we don't know we don't know."
 
#544 ·
To keep it short and sweet just for you MarK, it goes something ike this. The only thing that I ever heard from a packer is the price is going down or soon will because, argentine honey, chinese honey, bumper crop, currency devaluations. You can choose any one of these or multiples. You've heard it all before. If you are the beekeeper the price is going up because short crop, no inventory, poor crop in argentina , aqntidumping duties about to take effect etc..

Me thinks that sums it up about right.

Jean-Marc
 
#548 ·
Me thinks that sums it up about right.

Jean-Marc
Then that's the market and you have to fit into it as best you can. And the motives of the packer are no less pure than the motives of the producer.

Maybe I'm not listening w/ the correct ears, but it seems like this Thread is doing alot of gripping about how evil packers are for doing what they do. They aren't in the business of buying and selling honey to keep you or I in business or in a new Prius. They are in business to make profit. They chose to do that by buying and selling honey. We all know that margin of profit of doing that, so where I don't think we should praise them for doing so, I do think we should thank them for doing so. Or we should become packers ourselves.

Take the price offered or don't, it's your choice. You can always sell out and do something more lucrative. Your choice. No one said that any of us had to be beekeepers.
 
#545 · (Edited)
The best way to rob a bank is to own one and the best way to buy honey is to steal it at current low prices.If your a packer, never divulge your out of honey or even close, sellers will take advantage of your situation , except the Chinese ,. who would probably drop their price further, hoping to increase volume
There is either a shortage of white honey, and probably colored honey, or the US economy is in such poor shape that it will not matter what honey sells for.(*HYPERINFLATION?) The sinking ship will take everyone down with it except the rats that caused it, they will be living somewhere else in luxury.Hate to be so pessimistic
There has been supposedly a serious dent made in the amount of transshipped Chinese honey arriving in the US, but then there could and probably are other methods of it's arrival into the country as well as Canada. Asia produces 38% of the total world supply of honey and the next method of delivery will probably be a direct pipeline to the buyers,consumers thereby avoiding messy drums and any traceability, (packaged honey).Believe me, You cannot stop these people , they are like varroa, only profit motivated and of course the market is there for this product, the price is always right just like wall mart
The unknown factors influencing the upward price movement is how much inventory is in packers hands and how much shelf price resistance there is ,tied with the inflation factor(Economy) and how much honey the packers will get at the current prices.One buyer in Canada has already increased the price 5 cents ,to 1.55, the exchange rate didn't change a whole lot , 3% down for the Canadian dollar. Is somebody getting a little short of supply?and trying to see how much they can get at this particular price.Me thinks very little honey ., if any was moving in Canada at 1.50/lb Canadian

Looking at the second chart, history of honey prices at http://www.apinews.com/en/contents/argentina-honey-price

In the later part of 2009 some honey seller or sellers got a lower than market price or offer or was this just offers that didn't get any takers, or somebody got some really cheap honey????
 
#546 ·
"your" is the posessive tense of "you". "you're" is the contraction of you are". Seems like you were having trouble w/ that in your opening sentence. I just thought I'd point that out since you are doing corrections of your posts.

Those **** packers. Who do they think thay are anyway? Only paying the lowest price that sellers will take. Why don't they get right w/ God and pay us what we want? Shame on them for their profit motive business practices. They should be more like the rest of us.
 
#547 ·
"Those **** packers. Who do they think thay are anyway? Only paying the lowest price that sellers will take. Why don't they get right w/ God and pay us what we want? Shame on them for their profit motive business practices. They should be more like the rest of us.[/QUOTE]

LOL!!!!!!:applause::applause::applause:

Then again, honey doesnt go bad, so just sit on it till it hits your price. How much patience do you all have?
 
#553 ·
I believe that this is the way to go, but, when we are all packing and selling honey, will we be any better off? Will we pay any more for honey than the packers will? I had to buy 2/3 of the honey I sold last year in order to keep my customers in honey. It hurt. I don't know if I will ever recover that investment, but if I do, it will take quite a long time. I happened to have the money, but I don't see how I can do that again. I certainly wouldn't take a loan to buy that amount of honey.
 
#554 · (Edited)
Mark you are starting to sound like a packer. I have customer I sell to in the the bucket for $1.85 by the truck load. They tell me they are having problem making it at that price.:cry::cry: Come to find out they have most of it sold before they get home for $2.50. WOW $.65 a lb (26% mark up) for just hauling honey. It's the producer that gets the smallest %. Good thing there was a producer that produced 2/3 of your honey or you would have lost all those customers.
Don't get me wrong the producer is making a living now, but for many years wasn't. It's all got to balance or it won't work.:eek:
 
#555 ·
I spent a few years as a packer/producer I have to say that servicing big warehouse accounts is a nightmare I don't care to relive. There is a reason that everything in the grocery business nowdays is fewer and bigger (I call it the Wal-Martization of America). Buyers want favorable terms, they want you to pay for shelf space, they want generous and aggressive promotion allotments, they want low minimum purchases, short lead times, and if anything starts granulating on the shelf just expect to get a bill for it. After all that they will drop you in a heartbeat when someone offers them something better. With honey prices as high as they are right now I can't imagine why anyone would want to make a large investment in packing facilities unless they felt they had done enough research to have a really solid business plan.When you move up from small packer producer into the world of high volume you begin to understand the real world that the large packer lives in. Say what you will about large packers they need to be shrewd businesspersons to be able to deal with the Wal Marts of the world. Producers need to accept the fact that they exist to make a profit for themselves not to insure that the producer gets what he feels he is entitled to.
 
#557 ·
Jimmy, you still have those 400 sitting over in the corner collecting dust? :)[/QUOTE]

Getting real tired of cleaning around them, is there really a market for that stuff nowadays?
 
#558 ·
Beekeepers complaining about the price packers are paying reminds me of grain farmers who complain about the price the local feed mill is paying.

Do you know what I don't hear? I don't hear the beekeeping equivalent to the complaining of a local farmer - he contracted too much grain out, and with the recent spike in commodity prices, he lost out on about a million dollars. Then again, he doesn't sell to the local feed mill either.

If the only buyer you deal with is the local feed mill/packer, then don't complain that all you can get is local feed mill/packer prices.
 
#559 ·
Thank you Jim Lyon for sharing your experience and wisdom.

"There is a reason that everything in the grocery business nowdays is fewer and bigger (I call it the Wal-Martization of America). "
No doubt the same reasons why there are less commercial beekeepers and honey packers around.We do sell some packed honey and are familiar with the market and most of its positives and negatives.Our honey is custom packed by some one else and we have no desire to spend alot of money to get any bigger in this market.Yes I don't mind admitting this industry needs honey packers, the more the better.
That's one of the problems , we don't seem to have enough competition in this end of the market
 
#560 ·
So what is the going price that packers are paying? I keep hearing alot of talk of what it might be and what it should be. I'm hearing reports of large bee losses in South America/Argentina and the drought they are having.

Will we see that $2.00 lb in a drum come spring?

I have a buyer for the rest of my honey at $1.65 but with the calls I have been recieving from people that want honey I'm hesitant to sell at that price.
 
#568 · (Edited)
Interesting it looks like about a 4% increase. If my rudimentary calculations are correct it translates to around $1.15 per lb. The most recent honey report shows Argentine white coming into the US in the $1.48 to $1.58 range, seems like a big margin for shipping and other costs. Maybe someone who understands this better can either correct my math or explain whats going on.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/fvmhoney.pdf
And as long as we are trying to make sense of stuff check out the Indonesian white honey imports, looks like it is coming in at about .90 per lb. whaddup?
 
#569 ·
No white honey produced in Indonesia. That´s what you all call Chinese transhipped/relabelled honey.
The argentinian brokers have always made a very nice margin of profit for their efforts. Some also finance the beekeepers by loaning them operating money. Again they seem to reward themselves generously for their efforts.

Jean-Marc
 
#570 ·
Gosh Jean Marc thats not what the report reads :scratch: 14 million lbs. of white honey @.87 0 lbs. of ELA and only 3 million lbs. of la @.83 (again excuse my rudimentary math). Must have been islands full of sweet clover over there last year. Wait a minute Indonesia isnt that the same country that suffered the devastating tsunami a few years back and spent the better part of a week deciding whether they should allow western nations to bring in humanitarian aid? Oooops sorry :eek:t:
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top