Tight global supplies hit cashew industry in India

A global shortage of raw cashew has kept prices escalated at unprecedented highs affecting India’s cashew industry. India, the largest consumer of the nut and a major exporter of processed cashew kernels, meets about 60-70% of its processing needs through imports.

The Indian cashew production has been stagnant for the past few years with output ranging 6-7 lakh tonnes while the country’s processing capacity has expanded to 2 million tonnes. India imports 9-10 lakh tonnes of raw cashew to process and export as kernels.

While the processors for the domestic industry have to pay exorbitant prices to get raw cashew from abroad, the rise in kernel prices in the export market has adversely hit the shipments.

The cashew crop in Vietnam and Cambodia, countries that both process and export cashew like India, have fallen short by 40%. These countries have turned aggressive buyers putting pressure on the raw cashew available from West African countries, which do not process the nuts. "Right now around 60% of the raw cashew from Africa is going to Vietnam and only the rest is available to us," said K Prakash Rao, managing partner of Kalbavi Cashews.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com