Schreiber Foods International Kitchen Blog
Saffron Prices Skyrocket as Demand Continues to Surge
Saffron has been used in food and medicine for 3000 years. Saffron flowers are cultivated primarily in Kashmir/India, Iran, Afghanistan, Morocco and Spain. The flowers are handpicked once a year around November and it takes about 150,000 to 160,000 flowers to produce 1 kilogram of the spice, which is about 450,000 strands. Handpicking saffron is…
Read MoreHistorically High Mandarin Orange Prices
The Mandarin Oranges crop is very tight this season, with prices soaring as high as 40% on the FOB purchase price, reflecting the added costs of energy, tin plates, and packaging materials. The opening prices for this season’s crop are about 40% higher than last season’s FOB prices, with an additional 50% increase to the…
Read MoreWater Chestnut Raw Material Shortage & Increased Demand
Last season’s raw material planting area for Ambrosia® Water Chestnuts was reduced by 1/3 compared to the previous season. Due to excess rain during harvest season, a number of our water chestnuts grew oversized, making them unsuitable for can production. In addition to the shortage, the demand for fresh water chestnuts in China has reportedly…
Read MoreCanned Peach Struggles
Peaches have been in short supply this season with various contributing factors affecting the market. We source our Ambrosia sliced and diced peaches in juice and light syrup from Greece, Spain and China, some of which are experiencing issues that are impacting the crop and pricing. Greece Peach trees in Greece experienced severe frost during…
Read MoreGlobal Shipping Cost Increases and Supplier Challenges
Shipping costs for ocean and domestic freight have been growing significantly since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and new surges in prices continue to take place as we navigate through 2021. In addition to record breaking costs, the rising demand for goods is causing severe delays in the supply chain.
Read MoreShipping Market Conditions Remain at Critical Levels
The port of Yantian in China has stopped receiving export laden containers until the end of May, 2021 due to a COVID outbreak, causing major congestion at the port and peripheral areas. The government mandated restrictive measures within the terminal complex have brought the flow of containers waiting to get in the terminal to a…
Read MorePort Issues Causing Logistical ‘Disaster’ for Exporters & Importers.
Nationally and globally, ports are struggling to handle the complex logistics of supply chains affected by the public health pandemic that has stretched throughout the past year, especially the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports in California. A number of troubling issues that have persisted for months, are slowing exports and imports, which as stated…
Read MoreOnly human labor used for harvesting coconut for Ambrosia coconut milk in Thailand
As you may have heard, PETA has been pushing retailers to stop selling coconut milk allegedly made with coconuts harvested by moneys, ever since it began investigating the alleged animal exploitation about a year ago. In reply to these allegations – Costco has recently pulled a major coconut brand from their shelves. We want to reassure…
Read MoreThai pineapple fruit supply continues to be extremely short
For several months, our packers have been reporting that the supply of raw material has been extremely weak, with record high prices. The winter harvest is off to a slow start; the harvest season (October through December) has been delayed to mid November because the fruit is still small and the tonnage per acre is very…
Read MoreThai Pineapple Crop Update
The pineapple market continues to be very difficult. Due to sluggish demand and low prices at the end of 2017 and throughout 2018 the price of fresh pineapple dipped as low as 3 Baht per kilo (about 10 cents) and farmers became discouraged from growing the fruit altogether; many of them switched to more profitable…
Read More