Price of orange juice may soon squeeze you
You may live a long way from the devastation of Hurricane Irma, but if you buy orange juice, you’ll be feeling the effect at the supermarket checkout counter.
Orange juice drinkers may pay as much as $2.30 more for a gallon as the result of the broad swatch Irma cut through Florida’s citrus crop.
Just how high prices rise depends on whether Brazil can increase its exports to the U.S. to help cover the shortfall, experts in the futures markets say.
The Florida Department of
Citrus estimates that 30% to 70% of the Sunshine State’s crop was destroyed. But price increases could be mitigated if consumers switch to other juices or juice blends.
Prices vary by store and region, but a half-gallon of Tropicana, made from concentrate, was selling for $6.48 Tuesday on Walmart’s website.
“You’re going to get to the point where people say: ‘I’m not paying $8 a gallon. I’ll do a blend drink,’ ” said Kevin Sharpe of Basic Commodities, a brokerage firm in Winter Park, Fla.
Whatever the damage estimates are now will only grow, he said. More fruit will fall off the trees prematurely because of stems kinked in the storm. Trees also will continue to soak in standing water.
Sharpe predicts prices will jump $1 to $2 a gallon at retail. Burt Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group, a retail and consumer goods consultancy, is forecasting
$2.30 — and a pinch shoppers will feel for a long while.
Ellis Hunt, chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission and a citrus grower for 41 years on land his family has worked for close to a century, believes prices won’t deter orange juice fans.
“If they love it, they’ll continue to buy it,” he said. “It’s like gasoline. Whether it’s $4 a gallon or
$2, people will still buy it.”