It is the essential of breakfasts ... but it could soon weigh heavily on the food budget of the French. Orange juice has seen its prices soar for several months, mainly due to poor harvests in the United States and Brazil, the two main orange exporting countries in the world. A surge in prices that is not surprising when we know that the price of frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ), peaked at $ 3.17 per pound at the end of July, when it was just above $ 1.75 at the same time last year.
The reasons for this runaway are to be found in Florida, the world's second largest producer of orange juice, after Brazil. For more than a decade, the southeastern state of the United States has been battling yellow dragon disease, also known as Huanglongbing (HLB). At the origin of this orange sickness, a bacterium, transmitted by an insect, the Asian citrus psyllid. It greens the fruits of the affected tree, making them unfit for consumption. Added to the "yellow dragon," Hurricane Ian, which hit the region in October 2022, has reduced the industry to a crawl. This season, production is expected to be 16.1 million crates (41 kilos each), which is 60% lower than last year. This is one of the worst Florida harvests since the 1930s, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Enough to alert the French agri-food industry. "Orange juice concentrate, used to make orange juice from concentrates and orange nectars (...) has become very complicated to find for all buyers in the juice sector, "said the National Interprofessional Union of Fruit Juices (Unijus), in a statement published in May. Not to mention that the situation is not much better in other exporting countries, according to the federation. "Mexican production, mainly for the US market, has also fallen by 30% this year due to drought. This is also what has been observed in Spain due to lack of water," the statement read.
Transfer to apple juice
Olivier Dauvers, a specialist in mass distribution, shares this observation. "With a 20% increase since the beginning of the year, inflation on orange juice is higher than the average for other food products, which is around 15%," says the expert. He sees little improvement in the short term, as Brazil is also a limited exporting country. "The market is very controlled, few players have permission to export, and prices are thus maintained," he comments. Another aggravating factor is the high price of sugar. "The price of fruit nectar used in industrial orange juice depends on the price of fruit concentrate, which is high, but also on sugar," says Olivier Dauvers. However, it has also been close to peaks since the beginning of the year.
Will consumers end up shunning the traditional breakfast orange juice? "For the moment, demand is stable," observes Olivier Dauvers. But it may not be forever: orange juice is indeed one of the only food consumer goods that should not see its price drop at the beginning of the school year. Other juices could then steal the show. "A transfer of demand towards apple juice is already underway," says the specialist, who notes their increasingly imposing presence at the head of the gondola of supermarkets. Orange, apple: who will win the battle on the shelf?