FAQs

All forecasts are reviewed quarterly by Expana’s analyst team. Where a significant market development occurs between scheduled reviews — such as a major supply disruption, trade policy change, or sharp demand shift — an intra-quarter update is published alongside analyst commentary explaining the revision.

Forecasts provide quarterly price targets up to three years in advance. This gives procurement and finance teams the forward visibility to support longer-term sourcing strategy.

Expana publishes price forecasts across more than 2,000 agrifood commodities, including proteins, dairy, grains, edible oils, packaging materials, and fresh produce. Coverage spans global and regional markets, with forecasts available at category and sub-category level.

Start with governance. Establish who makes decisions, and how quickly, when a trigger hits. Do that before a trigger hits. Then map your five most exposed categories by origin concentration and known grey rhino risks. The combination of governance and scenario clarity is what makes the rest of the work executable. Scenario planning without governance to act on it has limited value. Governance without scenario context has limited direction.

Those sourced from a small number of geographically or politically concentrated origins. Tree nuts like hazelnuts and almonds, grown in only a few countries, are structurally fragile. Pistachios, with major origins in Iran, Turkey, Syria, and China, carry both climate risk and significant geopolitical exposure. Energy and fertilisers are currently under compounding pressure from multiple active conflicts.

Track leading indicators across three dimensions for each category: climate and weather patterns, geopolitical developments, and macroeconomic signals like yield curve movements and unemployment trends. The harder challenge is organisational: documenting this knowledge so it survives team changes, and having a governance structure that is ready to act when signals escalate rather than simply noting them and moving on.

More often than most risk plans assume. Analysis of the past four decades shows at least one significant black swan event almost every year. Financial and geopolitical shocks are the most frequent and the most severe. The planning implication is straightforward: black swans are not rare outliers. They are a recurring feature of the operating environment.

A black swan is a sudden, high-impact event that was not predicted in advance, and arguably could not have been. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial crash are common examples. A grey rhino is the opposite: a large, obvious risk whose warning signals have been visible for months or years, but which organisations consistently fail to act on until it becomes a crisis.

Urner Barry’s salmon prices and salmon index are incorporated into the Expana platform, alongside salmon forecasts and expert insights. 

Urner Barry’s seafood prices and seafood index are incorporated into the Expana platform, alongside seafood forecasts and expert insights. 

Urner Barry’s Executive Conference has been incorporated into Expana’s global events – you can find details on the next Executive Conference here. 

Urner Barry’s chicken prices and chicken index are incorporated into the Expana platform, alongside chicken forecasts and expert insights. 

Urner Barry’s egg prices and egg index are incorporated into the Expana platform, alongside egg forecasts and expert insights. 

With Expana IQ, a cost model for a finished product SKU can be built in minutes from a single product description. The platform maps ingredients, packaging, energy, and indirect costs automatically and keeps them current via API, removing the manual upkeep that makes most cost models go stale within weeks.

Cost estimates made at the start of an NPD cycle are rarely accurate by launch. A cost model integrated into the process updates as market prices move, so the business case reflects a live view of input costs rather than a snapshot from six months ago.

It gives procurement an independent view of what underlying inputs have actually done in the market. When a supplier claims costs are rising, a benchmark model built on live market data can validate or challenge that with evidence. The negotiation shifts from opinion to fact.

Key factors include slaughter volumes, carcass weights, pork cutout values, feed costs, export flows, freezer inventories, retail promotions, foodservice demand, disease risk and seasonal buying patterns. Specific cuts such as pork belly, ribs, ham and trimmings can also behave differently depending on demand and availability.

A pork price forecast is a forward-looking view of how pork prices may develop over a specific period. It considers current prices, supply conditions, demand signals, export activity, feed costs, inventories, seasonal trends and wider economic factors. Expana’s pork price forecasts help buyers understand potential market direction and pricing risk.

The picture is mixed but generally more resilient than Colombia. Brazil has seen favourable conditions and is expected to deliver a stronger harvest. Peru and Ecuador have both had broadly stable outlooks with no major disruptions. Colombia’s weather-driven decline stands out as the exception in the region rather than the rule.

It is less about weather and more about price expectations. Producers who have grown accustomed to five years of elevated prices are reluctant to sell at current levels, hoping prices will recover. This is slowing the flow of coffee to market independently of any weather-related supply issues.

Physical coffee differentials have tightened sharply. Expana’s Benchmark Price assessment for Colombian Arabica differentials nearly doubled between December 2025 and April 2026, moving from USc 22/lb to USc 40/lb — reflecting the reduced availability of Colombian beans in the market.

Petrobras sets domestic gasoline prices in Brazil. If it raises them, ethanol becomes more competitive at the pump, which pulls more cane away from sugar production and tightens supply. The market has been watching for that signal for weeks. The current consensus is that Petrobras will not move until the Middle East conflict is resolved, and even then, any adjustment is expected to be limited.

The link exists, but it is not automatic. Sugar supply and demand fundamentals are currently comfortable, and a large sugarcane harvest is keeping a lid on prices despite the theoretical case for diverting more cane toward ethanol. The incentive is there. The market just has not moved decisively to act on it yet.

Brazilian cane mills decide how much sugarcane to direct toward sugar versus ethanol. When sugar prices are low and energy prices are high, the economics shift toward ethanol. That flexibility makes Brazil’s sugar and energy markets more tightly connected than almost anywhere else, a price move in one can ripple directly into the other.