Pumpkin - Poor planting and quality of GWS could put pressure on Shineskin
Due to bad economic benefit within the last 3-4 years, farmers continue to reduce the planting area and this planting year is no exception, coupled with sand storms and snow showers during the end of May, the planting area continues to reduce by a further 10-15%. Quality for this season will be questionable.
Ordinarily one Pumpkin will have about 100-110 seed counts, this year, most of are 60-70 counts, so the yield is much reduced.
Estimations are that there will be max 5000-5500 for all GWS in china for crop 2018. There is also have some old crop in the market, old crop quantity is more than new crop quantity, however, old crop is bad quality materials including frozen, mouldy, or high pesticide kernels, so, it's high risk on GWS quality. Caution with some packers should be advised as some may mix different old into new crop.
Our packers will only ship new crop, raw materials are obtained from our packers lands and/or our farmers sign contracts with them.
Pricing, we don't believe will come down for current crop, because old crop materials price remains firm, because those materials are also under high price to purchase by speculators!
Hopefully price may stabilise from new crop, at moment, the price is increased 200-250 usd/t vs July; if demand is increasing and everyone rushes to cover, price will increase very quickly.