NEWS IN A NUTSHELL
to help grow our opportunities there. We believe we can grow the almond market significantly if we do things in the right order. Governments want their people to be healthier and they want to create jobs, so we can help do both. Countries like China and India are interested in this. We are continuing to build those relationships and learning how to work with different government authorities and stakeholders to make mutually beneficial progress. We are focusing on relationships to make it easier to export almonds. Recently, the UK reduced their import duties, and we are hoping for improvements in Japan as well. There are many factors involved, not just duties and technical issues, but also competition from other nuts and plant-based ingredients. However, we still provide about 80% of the world’s almonds and expect to maintain by far the largest share of the market by 2030. Australia and Spain can’t expand much because of their land and water restrictions, so California almonds will remain the top supplier. Even if other countries have better trade terms, as consumer demand grows there will continue to be strong demand for California almonds. We are known throughout the world for having the best quality and a consistent supply. AF: What are ABC’s strengths that continue pushing the industry forward ? CT: The research piece is vital. The depth and breadth of knowledge amassed is incredible. We have amazing people working with us including some of the world’s top experts in almonds and market development. Our relationships are key in helping us understand the broader network around the world. Many of our trade and regulatory team members have worked for our embassies and consulates and the foreign ag service. They understand longstanding and solid relationships that help us prioritize the issues. Above all, they are trusted, so the relationships and perspectives that we foster allow us to understand things more deeply as opposed to what you might read in the media. The other piece is driving global demand and ABC’s strength in developing a market. In the more developed markets, like the U.S. and Europe, the overall volume is
significant — 728M and 642M pounds, respectively. However, those are our more mature markets with smaller growth rates. In that situation, it’s easy for organizations to jump into costly market share battles. But instead of trying to increase one’s slice of the pie, it can be more fruitful to focus on making the pie bigger — and remembering that a 1% growth rate in the U.S. equals 70M pounds. That’s bigger than the total consumption of many of the markets where we do business today. Getting that 1% isn’t easy. This is where innovation and creativity come in to expand demand on behalf of our growers and identify global opportunities. We also need to plan for the future, looking for the 5-to-10-year growth opportunities and expanding market diversity. It is never a good idea to be overly reliant on one market or region — we ship to more than 100 countries and are seeing growth in virtually every region where we are engaged. From a strategy standpoint, we often tap local resources and bring in expertise. As we explore new markets to develop, this plays a key role. Turkey and Morocco are two markets that have greater potential and we’re exploring but we have also identified several longer-term markets where we are building relationships and knowledge. There are teams of people who know those markets deeply, so we pull in their insights to inform the best path forward. This helps us to utilize our resources wisely and get the best return for the growers. AF: Could you share some wins the Almond Board has collectively achieved recently ? CT: The Almond Board’s committees and industry members have done a lot! There are also some significant things in conjunction with the Almond Alliance. Almonds were just deemed a healthy food by the FDA, which is a huge win. And with collective industry efforts, almonds (almond milk, almond butter, and whole kernel) were included in the WIC program — the nutrition program for women, infants and children — that many people take advantage of. One of our barriers is allergens, so we are embarking on research with top allergy experts to examine novel treatment and prevention strategies for almond allergy. While almond allergy is extremely rare, there is emerging
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ALMOND FACTS
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