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Lots of good posts in the last few days. Well maybe not all good posts, but is in the eye of who is reading it. The days of the high hop prices and shortages are now diminished. In reading the posts I see some good points, some half truths and lots of information that is missing. First let me say, we all paid some very high prices a few years ago that we are all still paying. I will give a view from the Hopunion side as I don’t know exactly how other merchants fared. I will say that we went out of our way to buy expensive hops to cover everyone’s needs. Today I still have some of those expensive hops coming in and I will be happy to take a 50% loss on them. This is called doing business. I did well on some deals and not so good on others. We kept buying hops in anticipation of brewers needing hops in the frenzy they were taking them and then all of the sudden the market stops and even worse, brewers became dealers. This has helped to kill my market for the excess of hops I bought for everyone, but guess what? I still have to pay for them. I don't like to cry because I am a big boy so I am stopping now, but only wanted to make the point that brewers aren't the only ones to suffer from a market that is heading down. A few years ago we had growers quitting on a regular basis because of poor prices and if we are not careful this will happen again. Unfortunately many growers planted when the prices were high in order to get healthy again, but it appears to be short lived.
What has happened in the market place is the recession has been very severe in some of the same counties overseas that were paying high prices and crying for more hops. We have had crops for two years that are some of the biggest crops ever. In fact around 1,000 acres was not even picked in the US. That is close to half of the British entire acreage. Problem was price, but even bigger was there was no place to store the excess hops, because of the slowdown of moving the 2008 crop out. Now remember we are talking about brewers worldwide that are delaying shipments. Growers are already talking about taking out acreage that was just put in two years ago. Talk about expense!
Will talk more tomorrow, but running late for a meeting. I can see you have lots to talk about and I have as well. Guys, this is a hard subject and many will never be satisfied, but we are working with our brewers on trying to make things a little better, but boy is it hard to do anything when people have way over contracted. I still don't understand some of the numbers that I see. Everyone made their own numbers on what to buy and as a dealer, we didn't set any minimums nor do I know of any other dealer for that matter. Has been a crazy time for all of us.
Cheers,
Ralph Olson
Hopunion LLC
What has happened in the market place is the recession has been very severe in some of the same counties overseas that were paying high prices and crying for more hops. We have had crops for two years that are some of the biggest crops ever. In fact around 1,000 acres was not even picked in the US. That is close to half of the British entire acreage. Problem was price, but even bigger was there was no place to store the excess hops, because of the slowdown of moving the 2008 crop out. Now remember we are talking about brewers worldwide that are delaying shipments. Growers are already talking about taking out acreage that was just put in two years ago. Talk about expense!
Will talk more tomorrow, but running late for a meeting. I can see you have lots to talk about and I have as well. Guys, this is a hard subject and many will never be satisfied, but we are working with our brewers on trying to make things a little better, but boy is it hard to do anything when people have way over contracted. I still don't understand some of the numbers that I see. Everyone made their own numbers on what to buy and as a dealer, we didn't set any minimums nor do I know of any other dealer for that matter. Has been a crazy time for all of us.
Cheers,
Ralph Olson
Hopunion LLC
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