Nutmeg And Mace

Nutmeg market largely unmoved

As 2016 draws to a close the Indonesian nutmeg and mace market remains mostly unchanged from its state of play back in June.

With Grenada still struggling to recover output after being hit by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Indonesia holds position as the main global producer.

Marco Van der Does of Van der Does Spice Brokers observed that prices have dipped slightly of late on a strengthening of the US dollar and because buyers have spread their purchasing this year.

“A lot of people did not take any risk with nutmeg anymore and they bought it spread out throughout the season, so there was no peak demand this year.  But in general, there is no fundamental change in the market,” he explained.

Shrivelled nutmeg was said to be around USD8,500 per tonne c&f EMP and ABCD at USD9,800/tonne c&f EMP. Mace was seen as little firmer at USD12,500/tonne c&f EMP.

“What you see is there is more selling pressure at the end of the year. People want to cash in stocks in origin, but you don’t see that much demand anymore because buyers are closing their books and they already bought by spreading their buying activities over the season,” Van der Does added.

In addition, he did not view nutmeg as suffering any major production issues this year as most of the heavy rains occurred during the summer months and not during February, which is the usual first peak production month, and had stopped by the second peak output phase of September/October.

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