Sales picking up

Flue-cured tobacco deliveries to Zimbabwe’s auction floors have increased, partly because growers need to raise money for their children’s school fees, according to a story by Elita Chikwati for the Herald.
Boka Tobacco Floors’ operations manager Moses Bias, who confirmed that deliveries to the auction floors had firmed, said that this was a normal trend as schools opened.
“We used to receive an average of 1,700 bales per day during the first days, but now we are getting an average of 6,000 bales per day,” he said.
Bias said the season was going well and that there had not been any challenges with prices.
The Herald story said that growers had sold about 45 million kg of flue cured tobacco for about $125 million, an average price of $2.79 per kg.
As has become normal practice, no indication was given of how this average compares with that of last season.
However, with 70 million kg sold during the 2017 season, the average price stood at 2.76 per kg; and with 60 million kg sold during the 2016 season, the average price stood at US$2.82 per kg.
The highest price paid so far this season at auction was said to have ‘remained’ on US$4.99 per kg, while contract prices had gone beyond US$5 per kg.
The highest contract price paid during the first 30 days of the 2016 selling season was US$6.25 per kg, whereas the highest auction price was US$4.99 per kg.