Dec. 2019 Position Report
December 14, 2019
Another record to end the decade.
The December Position Report was released Friday January 10th. Total shipments for the month were 205.96 million pounds setting a new record for December. This is up 3.2% over last year and just edged out the previous shipment record of 204.56 million pounds from December 2018. Export shipments were 148.47 million pounds which are 1.5% higher than this time last year. Domestic shipments came in at 57.48 million pounds and set the domestic record by moving 7.7% more than last season. Overall shipments for the month did better than expected with the increases in domestic shipments helping to set the record.
The 2019 year to date crop receipts are now 2,385,328,020 pounds. When compared to last year deliveries are up 8.32%. With December’s receipts so close to 2.4 billion pounds most buyers are estimating a total crop size of 2.45 billion pounds and some think it could get as high as 2.5 billion. Only time will tell, and we will have to see what new information January’s report brings.
The market has been relatively quiet since Thanksgiving and buyers have used this as an opportunity to push pricing down over the last month and a half. Now that the holidays are over, and buyers have another piece of the crop size puzzle, we will hopefully start to see some stability return to the market. We will see how buyers digest this report over the next week and see if the larger crop size continues to negatively impact pricing.
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