Sales of U.S. orange juice dropped in August amid signs that the beverage’s two-and-half year decline is slowing.
Consumers bought 34.65 million gallons of orange juice in the four weeks ended Aug. 29, down 3.7% from the same four-week period a year earlier, but a slight increase from July when OJ sales reached their lowest on record, according to Nielsen data going back to January 2002.
Traders in the thinly traded frozen concentrated orange juice market have been looking for orange- juice sales to reach a bottom. Consumers have turned toward more exotic competitors or are skipping sit-down breakfasts altogether. A consumer trend toward less sugary beverages has some consumers eschewing juice altogether.
Nielsen data shows that the market’s decline has been slowing. The beverage’s year-over-year drop in August was its smallest yearly drop since February 2014 and the fourth month in which year-over-year declines have slowed.
Not-from-concentrate orange juice, had its smallest decrease of the season, dropping 4% year-over-year to 20.49 million gallons even as prices for the juice have climbed 5% higher so far this season from last season at $7.70 a gallon.
Orange-juice makers have been competing for a limited amount of fruit. Citrus greening, a bacterial disease that curtails the size of the oranges and makes the fruit drop from the trees before fully ripe, has shrunk crops in Florida, the source of most of the oranges used in U.S. juice.
The average price of all orange juice has risen 4.3% this season to $6.55 a gallon in the four weeks ended Aug. 29. In June, prices hit a record-high of $6.63 a gallon.
The price of frozen-concentrated orange juice traded on the ICE Futures U.S. exchange has fallen 5.8% this year, reflecting the lack of demand for U.S. orange juice. The most actively traded contract, for November, was recently down 0.5% at $1.3175 a pound.
