Hey Friendos,
As a broker of Limonene I talk to a lot of manufacturers and just had an insightful convo with one of our manufacturing partners today, so if anyone is interested feel free to read below.
Florida has gone from producing over 200 million crates of oranges per year all the way down to 10 million. This is mostly due to farmland in FL getting scooped up by developers for real estate, as well as outsourcing production to Brazil. If Brazil does experience a 30% increase in orange crop yield this year, total crates produced will be up to 320 million crates by the end of the year. MFGs will also source from Mexico, South Africa, and a few other countries but Brazil holds the lion’s share.
Problem is, pretty much all the precursors for domestic limonene production are imported from Brazil, who got levied with tariffs as we all know. Domestic MFGs are either bringing in tech grade from Brazil to convert into Food Grade (No idea how that process is done), or they are bringing in orange peel extracts from Brazil/overseas to produce Food Grade. My guys were telling me their probably won’t be any new price changes until November, or if the tariffs are removed sooner. Granted, there is one source I know of that uses Cali’s orange crop, but they only produce 10 full truckloads a year, which would not even be able to supply a large kratom lab for 2 months or so.
Hoping these tariffs don’t last much longer, Limonene kind of pays my rent (Not even kind of it legitimately does), but we shall see. Feel free to reach out if you want to pick my brain on this
