Avocado Analytics

Understanding the NZ avocado industry

This site is a work-in-progress as I attempt to understand how the avocado industry works. The ultimate goal is a model similar to dairyanalytics.co.nz, but I'm not there yet. If you have any data relating to avocado prices (or know the answers to my questions and want to point out my ignorance), please get in touch oscar@dowsonfarms.co.nz.

Contracting

I'd like to understand how sales are negotiated at different steps along the supply chain. At this point, I know nothing.

  1. How are export and domestic sales negotiated?
  2. Are there forward contracts?
  3. What is the price breakdown along the supply chain?
  4. How elastic is domestic demand to price?
Historical seasons

nzavocado.co.nz provide some good information in their annual reports. The data is a little coarse. You can see the swings of over- and under-production. Trends have been to increase production and increase price.

Questions
  1. Three years buck the trend: 2003, 2013, and 2019. What happened in those years?
  2. Why does sprice increase with supply? We're still not meeting demand?
  3. How are these average prices calculated? There is strong intra-seasonal variability in prices.
  4. Is there any data at a higher fidelity?
Domestic retail prices

figure.nz have this nice plot (license) of prices at domestic retail outlets. It's a lot more than the orchard gate prices above!

Questions
  1. It pretty clear that something changed in the market in 2016. What?
  2. Was the lack of a May 2020 spike due to Covid?
  3. Is there more recent data?
  4. Is there corresponding data on sales volume?
  5. What is the price breakdown along the supply chain?
Avocados Go Global

Part of the change seems to be the introduction of the New Zealand Avocados Go Global scheme. There are five key objectives of the programme:

  1. Market Entry & Growth
  2. Consistent and Sustainable Avocado Supply
  3. Efficient Supply Chain
  4. Products from Waste
  5. Information Portal, Knowledge Transfer & Adoption

It seems to me that a better understanding of how prices are set, what their drivers are, and how volatility changes over time is a key component of an efficient supply chain (3), and a website similar to dairyanalytics.co.nz would help disemminate this knowledge (5).

Questions
  1. Is the research from AGG public?

Having trouble or got some suggestions? Send an email to oscar@dowsonfarms.co.nz.

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