The March 2020 Position Report was released Thursday, April 9th. Total shipments for the month were 208.22 million pounds, setting a new record for March and becoming the fourth month in a row to set a record for total shipments. This is up 12.6% from last year’s shipment total of 184.95 million pounds. The previous record for March came in 2018 and totaled 193.95 million pounds. Export shipments were 128.56 million pounds which were up 3.5% over last year, but did not set a record. Domestic shipments came in at 79.67 million pounds and was a whopping 31.2% over last March. Shipments continue to remain strong and shows the industry can rise to the occasion in moving this record crop.
The 2019 year-to-date crop receipts are now 2,533,410,494 pounds. This is an increase of 11.34% over this time last year. The sold percentage for the industry is currently 79.4%. We are keeping pace with last year’s sales which was 79.5% sold through March.
All in all, this was a very positive report. Record shipments continue to role in, and the total crop size went up very little from last month. In a normal world we would see price increases following this report, but these times are far from normal. With all the uncertainty out there the best that we can hope for is this report will bring some stability to pricing and stop the gradual slide we have seen in recent weeks.
On a closing note, I just wanted to let everyone know that Harris Woolf has not skipped a beat shipping and packing product for our customers while continuing to keep the health and safety of our employee’s priority number one.
