Vesper has expanded its proprietary Shea & Cocoa equivalent fats coverage with 10 new Vesper Price Index (VPI) benchmarks for Shea butter and its derivatives. Published weekly, these benchmarks combine inputs from renowned brokers to bring transparency to one of the most opaque supply chains in the market.

What's New:

• Expanded Shea Coverage: Weekly benchmarks for Crude, Semi-Refined, Handmade, Shea Olein, and Shea Oil across key West African origins (Ghana, Burkina Faso).

• Broad Market Input: Prices derived from renowned brokers, combining inputs from multiple partners to ensure robust and unbiased market representation.

Why It Matters:

Public price transparency for Shea is extremely limited, leaving procurement teams to rely on fragmented signals or single-source quotes. These proprietary VPIs provide the independent reference needed to verify quotes in a notoriously non-transparent market. Especially with Cocoa price movements of the past years, this was a much-requested product from our users

How to Use It:

• Prices Widget: Bookmark specific grades (e.g., Shea Stearin, Crude Shea Butter) for one-click access to the latest weekly prices.

• Price Comparison: Compare different processing stages (e.g., Crude vs. Semi-Refined) to identify value opportunities and spot diverging trends between product types.

• Cost Models: Select these Shea VPIs as ingredients in your Cost Models to forecast the total cost of confectionery, Chocolate or any other formulations using actual market data.

How to access?

Add to new or existing dashboards using the search function, or contact your Customer Success Manager at [email protected] to confirm which specific grades are currently active for your region.

Added dedicated news coverage for packaging markets, tracking regulatory developments, sustainability initiatives, and material demand shifts across agricultural supply chains. Our 12th commodity-specific news feed, powered by AI models that filter global outlets to deliver only relevant packaging intelligence.

Why It Matters: Packaging costs can represent 10-30% of total product costs, yet most procurement teams track these markets separately from ingredient intelligence. Policy changes, material innovations, and input cost movements in packaging directly impact your bottom line and product competitiveness.

What's New:

• AI-filtered news from global outlets, eliminating noise

• Global and regional packaging market trends

• Regulatory developments and sustainability initiatives

• Material demand shifts and supply constraints

• View packaging feed individually or combined with all 12 commodity feeds

• Custom keyword notifications

• Direct keyword and region search within the feed

How to Use It:

1. Access Packaging News in your lefthand bar navigation

2. Set up keyword notifications for topics you're tracking

3. Search by keyword or region to find specific developments

Vesper has Expanded Forecast Coverage, adding 1200+ new price forecasts across key commodity categories. This massive expansion adds price outlooks to previously unforecasted products, enabling procurement teams to anticipate price movements across their entire commodity basket—from coffee beans to meat cuts.

What's New:

• 1200+ New Forecasts: Price predictions now available for products that previously showed only historical data

• Multi-Category Coverage: Major expansion across Eggs, Grains, Meats, and Coffee categories

• Enhanced Cost Model Predictions: More ingredients in your cost models now are part of forecasts

• Deeper Market Visibility: Forward-looking insights for specialty and regional products that lacked predictive analytics

Why It Matters: Procurement decisions require forward visibility across all ingredients, not just major commodities. This expansion eliminates forecast gaps that forced teams to make assumptions about future prices. Now, whether you're buying specialty coffee blends or regional meat cuts, you have data-driven predictions to guide purchasing decisions and budget planning.

What's included?

• Eggs: Shell eggs, liquid, and processed egg products

• Grains: Wheat, corn, barley, and specialty grain varieties

• Meats: Beef, pork, and poultry cuts across multiple regions

• Coffee: Arabica, Robusta, and regional blend benchmarks

• 12-month forecast horizons (where data availability permits)

• Automatic integration with existing cost models

Vesper has launched Direct Widget Data Export, streamlining how users extract data from the platform. This feature eliminates the multi-step process of navigating to separate download centers, allowing instant data exports directly from any widget you're viewing—saving valuable time for teams that need to quickly move data into reports, models, or presentations.

What's New:

• One-Click Export: Download data directly from the three-dots menu in any compatible widget

• Instant Access: No need to navigate to Data Download or remember complex product names

• Multi-Widget Support: Works across Prices, Price Forecasts, Production, Import/Export, and Stock widgets

• Format Preservation: Data exports match the exact view and timeframe displayed in your widget

• Simplified Workflow: From insight to Excel in seconds

How to Use It:

1. Navigate to any widget showing the data you need

2. Click the three dots in the top-right corner of the widget

3. Select "Download" from the dropdown menu

4. Access your file immediately in your email inbox

5. Paste into your model or report—formatted and ready to use

How to access? This feature is live for all users with Download data across the platform. No setup required. To get access please reach out to your customer success manager or [email protected]

Vesper has launched Vesper for Excel, a powerful new integration that brings Vesper's live commodity intelligence directly into your spreadsheets. This feature eliminates manual data entry, allowing teams to spend less time maintaining spreadsheets and more time analyzing markets with real-time data feeding directly into the models and templates they already use.

What's New:

• One-Click Refresh: Update all Vesper data in your spreadsheets instantly. With a single click, you can access real-time prices, forecasts, FX rates, and fundamentals.

• Direct Data Access: Pull data from over 160 global sources directly into any cell in your spreadsheet.

• Native Integration: Vesper for Excel lives natively within your Excel, integrating seamlessly with your existing workflow and templates.

• No Coding Required: Perfect for procurement, finance, and sales teams who need live data in spreadsheets without any technical overhead.

Why It Matters: The time spent on manual data collection and entry is time lost on strategic analysis. Vesper for Excel automates this process, ensuring the latest market information always powers your most critical models. It shifts your team's focus from data maintenance to data-driven decision-making.

How to Use It:

1. Download the add-in from the Microsoft Excel marketplace.

2. Log in with your Vesper API Excel key.

3. Set up once by using the Vesper for Excel sidebar to choose the data you need (e.g., commodity, price type, date range).

4. Click "Refresh" at any time to update all data points in your sheet instantly.
   

How to access? Reach out to your customer success manager or [email protected] to learn more about the Excel Add-in or the various options to extract or integrate Vesper data directly into your workflows

What data? Vesper for Excel offers seamless access to Vesper's data:

• Vesper Price Index (VPI)

• Partner and Public price benchmarks

• Forecasts for Price, Production, and Stock levels

• FX rates

• Global trade data

• S&D/Fundamental data

• Stock levels
  

Summary: Vesper has expanded its oils & fats coverage with a new weekly Vesper Price Index (VPI) benchmark for Crude Shea Butter (FOB Tema) from Ghana. This proprietary benchmark, exclusive to Vesper, provides a reliable, independent price reference for an increasingly strategic commodity in food manufacturing.

What's New:

• Weekly VPI price benchmark for Crude Shea Butter

• FOB Tema delivery basis from Ghana—the world's largest shea butter exporting country

• Full integration with existing oils & fats dashboards and pricing tools

Why It Matters: As cocoa prices continue to surge, we've seen increased demand from our user base for alternatives like Shea Butter, which has emerged as a critical cost-effective substitute for cocoa butter. This exclusive VPI benchmark responds directly to user feedback, delivering essential price transparency for those seeking different compositions to limit the effects of cocoa volatility on end product applications. Having Vesper's independent benchmark helps verify supplier pricing and supports more confident negotiations during this period of volatility in cocoa markets.

How to Use It:

1. Find the new Shea Butter (Crude) benchmark in the pricing widgets section

2. Add it to the price comparison widget for side-by-side analysis with cocoa butter prices

3. Incorporate this benchmark into your custom cost models to evaluate how chocolate formulation costs change when substituting with shea butter

4. Monitor weekly updates to identify emerging trends and optimize buying decisions

Related Features: This benchmark complements Vesper's existing offerings:

• Cocoa butter price benchmarks

• Vegetable oil price benchmarks

• Cost modeling for ingredient substitution analysis

Whats New? Vesper is extending our AI-powered forecasting horizon from 6 to 12 months for select dairy, sugar, and oils commodities with established price histories (5+ years of data). This extended visibility enables procurement teams to move beyond tactical buying decisions to support annual budgeting and strategic planning.

Why it matters? Together with expert human analyst outlooks and comprehensive coverage of S&D/Fundamentals, the forecast powered by AI technology gives a comprehensive outlook on future market movements. The extended 12-month horizon allows users to incorporate forecasting into their decision making on more strategic timeframes.

As always, forecasting accuracy is transparently available on the platform for each individual product, allowing users to assess performance and incorporate it into decision-making.

How to Use It:

1. Access the forecast widgets directly on your custom dashboards (add through the search tool if needed)

2. If a product has a 12-Month forecast horizon, it will automatically be visible on your screen

3. Check forecast performance by choosing the 12-Month option in the accuracy dropdown

More products will be added to the extended range in the course of Q2

Related Features: This extended forecasting complements our existing forward-looking toolkit:

• Forward pricing up to 16 months ahead in the Forward Pricing widgets

• Expert analyst outlooks for both short and long-term market perspectives

• Fundamental market drivers dashboard for tracking supply and demand trends

These combined tools give procurement teams unprecedented visibility into future market movements for more confident strategic planning.

Launching supplementary bi-weekly cocoa highlights from Vesper's in-house analytical team, complementing the regular market commentary from independent expert Martijn Bron. These additional reports focus on technical analysis, derivative pricing, and weather insights to support decision-making during unprecedented market volatility.

Why it Matters: With cocoa prices at historic highs, procurement teams need comprehensive market coverage. Our in-house analytical team now provides targeted analysis on alternate weeks to Martijn Bron's expert commentary, combining deep technical analysis with veteran market insights during this volatile period.

What's New:

• Bi-weekly analysis from Vesper's analytical team focusing on:

  • Technical market indicators

  • Derivative pricing trends

  • Weather impact assessment

  • Supply chain disruptions

• Cocoa coverage schedule:

  • Martijn Bron's expert market commentary

  • Alternating with Vesper's analytical team reports

  • CRA Cocoa weather reports published frequently

How to Use It:

1. Access Cocoa Highlights in the Market Analysis section on Vesper or the mobile app

2. Set up notifications to be alerted of any new releases

Expanded sugar price coverage with new country-specific Vesper Price Indices for Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain, complementing our regional EU benchmarks. All benchmarks are updated weekly and remain DAP (Delivered at Place) derived from actual market participants aiding price discovery.

Why it Matters: National sugar markets have distinct dynamics driven by local production, trade flows, and supply-demand factors. While regional benchmarks provide essential context, country-level visibility enables more precise procurement strategies, especially in deficit markets like Spain that rely heavily on imports.

What's New:

• Weekly white sugar benchmarks (ICUMSA 45) for:

  • Germany

  • Netherlands

  • Poland

  • Spain

• Delivery basis: DAP (Delivered at Place)

• Weekly updates every Wednesday

How to Use It:

1. Access Sugar benchmarks in the Prices widgets by searching for ‘white sugar‘