It's that time of year when position reports, new crop estimates, and acreage reports start to come one after another. The March Position Report was released on Thursday, April 11th. This was followed by the Bountiful Ag 2024 crop estimate on Friday, April 12th and the Terra Nova Trading 2024 crop estimate on Monday, April 15th.
The year-to-date 2023 crop receipts now total 2.44 billion pounds, which is 4.1% below the 2.54 billion pounds received to date last season. March had 28 million pounds of new receipts, which makes it the largest March on record. There was also 10 million more pounds reported this month than in February. This goes to show that there are still some folks in the industry playing games with their raw product inventory. If almond receipts through the rest of the year realign with the five-year average, we are looking at a total crop size around 2.45 billion pounds.
2024 Crop Estimates
Bountiful Ag- 2.79 billion pounds
Terra Nova Trading- 2.97 billion pounds
Total shipments for the month were 237.1 million pounds. This is a decrease of 15.7% when compared to last year's 281.1 million pounds. Export shipments came to 174.6 million pounds, which is down 18.7% from last year. Domestic shipments landed at 62.5 million pounds. This is down 6.0% versus last season's 66.4 million pounds. While these shipping numbers seem low when compared to last season, they are still strong enough to keep the industry on pace to continue lowering the carryout. If California can continue to ship at this pace through the last four months of the season, the 2023 carryout will be around 500-550 million pounds.
New sales for the month were 181.7 million pounds compared to 143.6 million pounds sold at this time last year. Sales have started to slow when compared to previous months as buyers and sellers debate the 2024 crop size and how that will impact the market. The year-to-date industry sold position sits at 75.4% based on a crop size of 2.45 billion pounds. This is slightly ahead of last year's 72.7% sold position.
The position report was another solid one that landed well within industry expectations. The 2023 crop size is pretty much known, overall shipments are still where they need to be to get the industry to a smaller carryout, and new sales were okay considering the current market environment. Based on the position report alone, market prices were likely to have firmed up going forward, but when we look at the bigger picture and throw the crop estimates into the mix, things get a little more complicated. Much of this information is just getting digested today and our sales team will be discussing the numbers with buyers and negotiating on the grower's behalf over the next few days.
