A new webinar presentation from the Florida Department of Citrus (FDOC) Economic and Market Research Department shows that U.S. orange juice (OJ) retail sales continue to remain up.
A data source for the webinar is the FDOC Nielsen Topline Report #10 of the 2019-20 Season for the four-week period ending July 4, 2020. According to Marisa Zansler, director of FDOC’s Economic and Market Research Department, it is estimated that Nielsen coverage accounts for approximately 85 percent of total sales at retail.
The report indicates that the average price of OJ has increased by 2.46 percent compared to the same time a year ago. The average price of not-from-concentrate (NFC) OJ is up 2.95 percent from a year ago for the four-week period ending July 4. The average price of reconstituted frozen concentrate (recon) has decreased by nearly 1 percent since the same four-week period a year ago.
Despite the increase in the average price of NFC OJ, total volume movement of NFC is up nearly 23 percent compared to the same four-week period a year ago. “With 19.4 million gallons of NFC juice sold this period, that’s an additional 3.6 million equivalent gallons sold, and that’s roughly equivalent to 625,000 grower boxes,” Zansler says.
At the same time, recon sales are up 16.62 percent, with 11.3 million gallons sold within the four-week period ending July 4.
When consumers began prepping their pantries in early March for the COVID-19 pandemic, OJ volume gains were the highest. (See a report from late March.)
However, over the last eight weeks, the average gain in volume movement is approximately 22 percent. Trends are still being evaluated, but experts believe that the new baseline may be a 20 percent increase over total volume sales last season, looking at a year-over-year increase. This means that U.S. OJ retail sales are currently at pre-2016 levels and are trending toward exceeding 2017 levels before the end of the season.
The U.S. Southern region registered the largest gain in volume movement of approximately 2.7 million more gallons of OJ compared to the same period last year, reaching a 24.6 percent increase and accounting for approximately 40 percent of equivalent gallons sales. Volume movement increased in the Midwest, Western and Northeast regions by 20, 18.5 and 14.6 percent, respectively.
Ashley Robinson, AgNet Media communications intern, wrote this article.