Market Moves
Report Date: Tue, Sep 28 2004
TUNA MARKET REPORT OCTOBER 2004
Since the launch of this web site our monthly reports on tuna contained a strong “buy” recommendation to “cover forward” to the year-end. The continued climb in the tuna raw material prices caused by consistently poor catches has endorsed this recommendation.
The raw material price has now hit $1200 a tonne. If you look at the tuna raw material price graph you can see just how volatile this market is with a low of circa $450 a tonne in March 2003 up to $1200 a tonne in September 2004.
Some canneries are making no offers whatsoever – they have no fish. It is now quite usual that when we are made an offer we have to make an immediate decision or the offer is withdrawn and replaced with a higher price for immediate acceptance or rejection. This is a serious “sellers market” where importers are now selling at well below their replacement cost.
We therefore recommend you cover now until at least the year-end or the end of January 2005. The tuna market can go down as fast as it goes up but as yet there are no indications of better catches. Even when the fishing improves such lower cost stocks have to reach the UK.
Looking at the bigger picture tuna remains a most popular sandwich choice. This high energy, low calorie fish is so healthy compared to other key sandwich ingredients. Yet despite the price increases tuna remains seriously competitive when compared in cost to say chicken or cheese, which are the other popular sandwich choices. We should all remain confident that tuna will continue to attract a loyal following and will continue to sell in massive quantities.
Other reports:
July 2004
June 2004
October 2003