As reported last month and now confirmed to be an unfortunate reality, blue swimming supply overseas is depressed and the landings have only worsened through October. We are now of the opinion that it is possible that the overseas landings will not improve sufficiently until late December or in January. It would be likely that raw material costs remain steady through January with little reduction. February or March would become the projected months for raw material cost reductions thereby leaving the US market to the potential of seeing no significant US price declines until Q2, 2017. This is currently our best guess but as the industry learned 3 times now in the last 8 years, no one can predict the severity of these situations with absolute certainty. We did open up our 7th plant in October but the landings in this remote part of Indonesia is not yielding significant volume yet.
Industry market update
november 1
