RTWed, 19 Jan 2022 13:42 UTC
© Getty Images/Shutterstock/Jeff Greenberg/KJN
The US orange crop is on course to be the smallest since the 1940s, which could lead to skyrocketing orange juice prices.
The US Agriculture Department (USDA) issued a gloomy forecast last week for Florida's orange crop, forecasting that the state will harvest merely 44.5 million 40-kilogram boxes of oranges in 2022
amid citrus disease and bad weather. This would be the smallest crop yield since the 1944-45 season, an analyst from the USDA told CNN Business.
The Sunshine State provides most of the orange juice in the US.
Meanwhile,
according to Statista.com,
demand for orange juice in the US soared during the Covid-19 pandemic after falling for the previous two decades.
The sales of 100% non-concentrated juices jumped from $5 billion to $5.5 billion in 2020, and stayed largely at that level last year, data from Euromonitor International shows. This has already pushed orange juice prices higher, and experts predict the trend will continue.
Overall, frozen concentrated orange-juice futures in the US closed on Friday at $1.50 a pound (0.45 kilograms), which is nearly a 50% increase from early 2019.According to the USDA,
Brazil, one of the globe's largest orange producers, is expected
to harvest 12% more oranges this year despite the drought that damaged its crop yield in 2021.
Mexico, the US' major citrus supplier, is also forecast to have a robust harvest "on optimal weather conditions."
"You have your classical supply-demand mismatch," Shawn Hackett, president of Hackett Financial Advisors, which specializes in agricultural commodities analysis, told CNN. He warned that consumers should expect "much higher prices [for orange juice] at the supermarket."
However, Brandon Saltmarsh, president of Florida-based HomeMaker Juice, told the
Wall Street Journal that
"the fundamentals do not support prices at these levels," as "there's still too much juice in the world."
"Copper is often referred to as the 'new gold', the 'new oil' or even the 'metal of the future' because of its indispensable role in low-carbon economies and high-tech industries," he writes.
In the article, Usmanov cited data from the International Energy Agency, according to which by 2040 the demand for copper, nickel and graphite will dominate among the minerals and metals used in clean energy technologies. At that point, copper demand will increase 2.7 times over 2020.
"This metal will also be key to renewable energy technologies," Usmanov writes.
At the same time, the USM founder notes, demand for copper has led to a rise in metal prices over the next few years and may outstrip supply in the future. To avoid a copper shortage, it is necessary to invest in exploration and new projects, as well as in the development of technologies to increase production and productivity, he said.
In May 2020, the World Bank unveiled a report that by 2050 the production of minerals such as copper, graphite, lithium and cobalt could increase by nearly 500% to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies.
The authors estimate that more than 3 billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed to use wind, solar and geothermal energy and to store energy in order to keep the heating process below 2 ° C.
In 2020, the price of copper, used in everything from energy to construction, rose by more than 22%, analysts at Goldman Sachs drew attention.
The increase in the value of the metal was caused by supply disruptions due to quarantine measures and a rapid recovery in demand from China. Prices are "very likely" to reach historic highs in the first half of 2022, they predict.