Vietnam: Cashew industry reduces export target
30 July 2022, Vietnam: According to statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in the first 6 months of the year, cashew export turnover reached 1.5 billion USD with more than 249,000 tons, down 9.1% in volume, down 9.2% in value compared to the same period in 2021.
Explaining this, the Vietnam Cashew Association (VINACAS) shared, many factors affect cashew export turnover; in which, the strongest is the COVID-19 pandemic, then the freight rate increased by more than 10 times compared to the first period of 2020. These two factors make many orders signed in 2021 but still do not delivery, must be backlogged until 2022. Although the business is still running orders in 2022, they are old orders of 2021.
Mr. Tran Van Hiep – Vice President of VINACAS informed that the average export price was about 5,792 USD/ton, an increase of 1.45% over the same period in 2021. However, the price of raw cashew imports from Africa from the beginning of the season so far has increased 15-20% over the same period. Export prices increased but did not catch up with the increase in import prices of raw materials.
This shows that importers and processors are tending to be slow to buy raw materials due to many reasons, mainly due to the lack of correlation between the price of imported raw cashew nuts and the price of export kernels. The price of raw cashew nuts is at a very high level compared to the selling price, the export processing cost is high while the selling price is low. Processing plants are difficult to balance to break even, not to mention profit.
Not only that, the cashew orchards in the country also did not achieve the expected yield because of the changing weather, affecting the flowering and fruiting in the second phase. India’s cashew crop also suffered a similar decrease in yield due to adverse weather.
These developments have affected the entire cashew industry. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development had to adjust the cashew nut export target in 2022 to 3.2 billion USD, down 600 million USD compared to the target set out in early 2022.
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