Recently, it is the harvest season of pine nuts in China, and the purchase price of pine nuts has risen rapidly. In September, the purchase price of Songta was still about 5 or 6 yuan / kg, and now it has basically reached 11 yuan / kg. According to the calculation of one kilogram of pine nuts from three kilos of pine tower, the purchase price of pine nuts is more than 30 yuan / kilogram, a record high. In the wholesale market, the price of pine nuts has reached 80 yuan / kg.
Meihekou City, Jilin Province is the largest pine nut distribution center in Asia and the largest pine nut processing center in China. The annual output of local pine nuts can reach about 100000 tons, accounting for 80% of the national output. In recent years, the growth of market consumption makes the local output unable to meet the needs of buyers. Therefore, buyers began to purchase from Yunnan, Shanxi and other countries, as well as North Korea, Russia, Mongolia and other countries. The continuous improvement of market demand, coupled with the tightening of original import supply and the rise of labor cost, have jointly pushed up the price of pine nuts.
According to the statistics of the international nut and dried fruit association, China is the second largest consumer of pine nut kernel. It is understood that since 2019, there has been a large gap between production and demand in China’s pine nut Market. In 2021, China’s pine nut output will reach 75000 tons, but the market demand will reach 110000 tons, with a production demand gap of more than 30%. Some domestic dry fruit companies said that the gross profit margin of pine nut products was about 35% in previous years and dropped to about 25% this year. Although the price of pine nuts increases at the source, the front-end sales price can not be raised. Enterprises can only choose to launch pine nut products at a small profit.
The shortage of foreign raw materials has also exacerbated the market gap of domestic pine nuts. It is reported that the annual processing capacity of pine nuts in Meihekou, Jilin Province can reach 150000 tons. Half of the raw materials come from China and half from imports. However, due to the impact of the epidemic in the past two years, not only the foreign procurement of raw materials is limited, but also the transportation cost has doubled. In previous years, the local pine nut processing plant could import 5 or 6 vehicles of pine nuts into the plant every day, about more than 100 tons. This year, the cost of shipping has increased seven times. Due to the epidemic abroad, there is a shortage of manpower, the output has decreased, and the purchase volume has decreased significantly. The price of processed imported pine nuts has also increased from about 60000 yuan / ton in previous years to about 150000 yuan / ton.
Pine nut picking is difficult, and the rising labor cost has also pushed up the price of pine nuts. The height of pine trees is basically between 20-30 meters. Pine towers grow at the top of pine trees. Professionals need to climb the trees with their bare hands and pick the mature pine towers one by one. The picking process is very dangerous. If you are careless, you will fall or die. At present, the people picking pine pagodas are some experienced local farmers. Novices generally dare not take this job. With the increasing age of these pickers, the manpower of picking pine pagodas every year is becoming more and more tense. In case of insufficient labor, the contractor can only increase the price of pickers. Last year, the daily salary of pickers rose to more than 600 yuan, and the average labor cost for playing a bag of pine tower was about 200 yuan.
China is not only a big consumer of pine nuts, but also the world’s largest exporter of pine nuts, accounting for 60-70% of the global transaction volume of pine nuts. According to the data of China Customs, the export volume of pine nut kernel in 2020 was 11700 tons, an increase of 13000 tons compared with 2019; The import volume was 1800t, an increase of 1300T compared with 2019. With the continuous rise of the domestic market, pine nut processing enterprises in Meihekou have also strengthened the transfer of exports to domestic sales. According to CCTV’s first finance and Economics program, there are 113 enterprises eligible for export in Meihekou. Now, due to the rising price of raw materials, they have transformed from export to domestic sales. Export enterprises are also stepping up efforts to develop sales channels in the domestic market and increase sales share in the domestic market. One enterprise said that in the past two years, the proportion of domestic sales has increased from about 10% to nearly 40%
Post time: Nov-10-2021