The June ethanol futures contract hit a record high last week at $2.29/gallon but that may not have a lasting effect on exports. The market has been in recovery mode as transportation fuel demand recovers from COVID restrictions that had sent ethanol values last year to a 10-year record low of less than 80 cents/gallon. Ethanol exports also tanked last year as global demand sunk along with prices. While the demand for ethanol exports is not indifferent to price, there are other factors shaping the market. As an additive to gasoline, ethanol demand is impacted by the price of petrol, the market demand for gasoline, and regulatory requirements for its use. Marketers have been suggesting that ethanol could fill the short-term gap in gas...
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.