The Almond Board of California released the Tuesday, March 11th. This is the 7th report for the 2024 crop year. Key highlights are below:  

Receipts

Receipts in February were 17.38 million lbs., down 4.6% from last February’s receipts of 18.21 million lbs. This brings total receipts for the crop year to 2.68 billion lbs., up 11.3% vs last year’s 2.41 billion lbs. Crop receipts have largely now come in and final crop size will quickly be finalized in the next few months. Current estimates on the final crop size are now 2.7-2.72 billion lbs.     

Shipments

Total shipments FTM were 214.93 million lbs., coming in just below industry expectations of 220 million lbs. This shipment number is down 2.8% vs. last February’s 221.13 million lbs. Total shipments continue to track closely to last year’s pace. While shipments slightly missed expectations it wasn’t a substantial variance. 

Domestic shipments were 56.18 million lbs., down 4.4% vs last year’s 58.79 million lbs. Domestic shipments continue to hold near the 60 million lbs. per month level. The domestic market has continued on its relatively consistent rate but is currently falling slightly behind last year and is 1.5% behind pace. Shipments will look to make up some ground in the coming months but we do not expect domestic shipments to significantly outperform last year’s performance at this rate.

Export shipments were 158.75 million lbs., which is 2.2% down vs last year’s 162.34 million lbs. Export shipments were down for the month in most of the major export regions. This was only not the case for the South Korea and Japan markets which saw a 19% and 4% increase for the month respectively. All other major markets were down for the month. This will continue to put pressure on EU and India markets as these markets will need to continue to focus on procuring and planning on additional shipments from origin. The ME markets have also seen YTD shipments regress which will help this region work through stocks on ground before they look to purchase more volume in the second half of the crop year.  

Sales & Commitments: Total sales FTM were 220.80 million lbs., up 2.9% vs. last year’s sales of 214.61 million lbs. We saw different buying strategies of domestic and export customers for the month of February. Exports led in purchases as they looked to plan shipments before any significant bloom news came out. The domestic market used a wait and see approach as they had a strong January covering some of their future needs. 

Commitments for the 2024 crop year stand at 577.42 million lbs., which is down 8.5% vs the 630.90 million lbs. from last year. The domestic market remains the most behind in historical commitment levels vs the export markets. This is likely to put more pressure on lower grade items as US customers will have to come in cover additional product for the 2024 crop. Export markets are in a better state but with low destination inventories globally these markets will need to continue to buy monthly. 

Uncommitted 2024 crop inventory sits at 964.88 million lbs., up 3.9% vs last year’s 928.82 million lbs. Uncommitted inventory is now reversing and is under 1 billion lbs. As uncommitted inventory continues to move lower some grades and sizes will become unavailable till new crop. 

In a Nutshell: 

The February Position Report further solidified supply and demand fundamentals for the almond industry. While this report doesn’t immediately signal a need for continued price increase, it leaves little room for possible price backtracking. 

With current market fundamentals now unlikely to show any significant deviation in future 24 crop reports vs. the solid previous years, we expect most price movement to be driven by 25 crop news. Early 25 crop news saw most apathetic to the bloom in California. While the weather was favorable for most of bloom, most saw bloom density as less than ideal and varied throughout the valley. This has given many the belief that we are unlikely to see any record yields for the 25 crop.     

Overall, this position report continues to point to strong fundamentals for almond supply and demand. With strong fundamentals and early concerns on 25 crop potential, we expect pricing to remain firm as we wait for additional crop news and crop estimates in the coming months.

Link to Position Report