Products and Price Changes due to Global Factors
I have recently received a letter from one of my main suppliers of Wildlife and Wild Bird products explaining the reasons for their increase in wholesale prices to retailers like myself.
Can I firstly state that all products currently on the Oaktree Home and Garden Website will not show an increase in price until new stock is purchased at the higher price, even then I will try and keep the increase to a minimum and should the prices fall again in the future I will also reflect this in my prices.
The letter states the following:
Food Prices have risen along with commodity prices in the last twelve months. In most cases the rise has been over 100% especially in high quality, oil rich foods (Bird Food) The reasons given are listed below.
Climatic conditions in 2007 led to poor harvests in both hemispheres, wet in the north and dry in the south, this hit crop yields severely.
Increasing World population has created extra demand for commodities causing world stock levels in storage to become very low.
An increase in wealth in Asia has led to higher demand for certain products, particularly meat.
It takes 10 tonnes of grain to produce 1 tonne of meat, hence this has resulted in lower exports from Asia.
An increase in Bio Fuel targets by many governments has raised the demand for oil seeds. This has led to farmers charging a premium for growing any minor crops over the price of Bio fuels. Most wild bird food products are deemed as minor crops hence the rise in bird food prices.
One of the largest grain merchants has built a massive crushing plant in Eastern Europe which means a lot of black sunflowers previously bought by the bird food industry are now being used for bio fuels.
Expanding wealthier populations in key producing countries like China, have reduced exports. It is anticipated that China will export approximately 20,000 tonnes of Sunflower Hearts this year compared to 135,000 last year. The Chinese have also decided to crush the vast majority of their peanut and sunflower crops into oil ultimately for human consumption.
Potential shortages of products is to be expected.
If you buy bird food from Oaktree Home and Garden you will receive what you order, however, I will source the items from different suppliers so if your product doesn’t resemble the photograph for that product do not worry. The images are there purely to give an idea of what the product is.