Even with the return of rains in the citrus belt of São Paulo and Triângulo Mineiro in Brazil from October 2024, the 2025-26 season scenario remains uncertain.

Brazil's Cepea, an industry body, explained that the flowers that opened after the rains were considered satisfactory. However, the development of the crop still depends on weather conditions during the season.

The 2024-25 crop is estimated at 223.14 million boxes of 40.8 kg oranges, a 27.4% drop from the 2023/24 season.

According to Cepea, adverse weather conditions have hampered production for five consecutive seasons, resulting in restricted juice stocks.

Cepea estimates indicate that Brazilian orange juice stocks may not recover during the 2024-25 crop, technically ending this season at zero. Thus, it will take a very positive 2025-26 season for at least a slight recovery.

The entity highlighted that even a decrease in exports in the 2024-25 season will not compensate for the reduced volume of processed fruit, keeping industry demand high.

Impact of the situation in Florida

Florida has been registering a decrease in its inventories and may need to import more inputs from Brazil, which helps to support domestic market prices. In addition to this scenario of limited production and stocks in Brazil, data released on Dec. 10 by the USDA indicates that the 2024-25 orange crop may total 12 million 40.8 kg boxes, which represents a 20% drop (or 3 million boxes) compared to the report released in October (15 million boxes).

Two factors influencing the drop in production in Florida are greening and Hurricane Milton in early October 2024.

By 2025, the conditions recorded in the Brazilian citriculture may support prices yearly.