The Vanilla Market is currently closed as suppliers wait until 2018 season officially opens in July. The opening date of the vanilla market for the past several years has coincided with Madagascar’s Independence Day (June 26th), but this year the vanilla market will open two weeks later on July 15th. The decision to delay the market opening stems from a conscious effort to increase vanilla quality in Madagascar and is predicted to have a positive effect.
Exports for this coming harvest will not start until October, and will not start arriving into the US until later in the 4th quarter. Current bean prices remain at all-time highs because the vast majority of 2017 crops were low quality due to premature picking. This took place because farmers were afraid of theft, and wanted to sell them as quickly as possible. We will have more information on bean quality of the 2018 crops after the market opens in July.
Other regions Uganda, Indonesia and India are still slow to come on board to increase inventories, but they are planting more vines and these beans will be available in the next few years. Once there is a greater supply of vanilla beans available, prices will drop. We continue to build our farmer networks in Madagascar and Uganda, and due to our vertical integration we remain very competitive on pricing within the industry.
Our farmer-owned association of vanilla farmers in Madagascar, Sahanala, is working hard to build trust to encourage vanilla farmers to improve their farming practices and increase output and quality from their vines. Sahanala has employed initiatives like dedicated health programs, a pension fund and rice bank donations to improve the daily lives of vanilla farmers and their families. With the associations’ fair market price and profit sharing, farmers have a greater incentive to register and participate in traceability programs. Rodelle can trace our vanilla back to the specific association and farmers who grew those vanilla beans. With this partnership, Rodelle has eliminated unnecessary links in our vanilla supply chain to provide a better product to our customers. Learn more about Rodelle’s supply chain and partnerships that are helping to shape the vanilla market of the future with our video here:
If you have questions about Rodelle’s vanilla products, feel free to reach out via email at <contact at rodelleinc dot com>!