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.

Vesper has launched Commodity Shipping Intelligence through an exclusive partnership with Upply, bringing freight rate benchmarks directly into the platform. This integration enables procurement teams to track delivered costs by combining commodity prices with real shipping rates for their specific inbound lanes—creating true landed cost visibility.

What's New:

• Inbound Freight Benchmarks: Real shipping rates for strategic procurement routes, not generic freight indices

• Upply Partnership Integration: Access to validated freight data from one of Europe's leading logistics intelligence providers

• Route-Specific Pricing: Targeted lanes for commodity imports (origin ports to destination factories)

• Multi-Modal Coverage: Ocean freight, road transport, and intermodal combinations where relevant

• Integrated Cost Analysis: Combine commodity prices with freight to calculate true delivered costs

Why It Matters: Commodity prices at origin tell only half the story. With shipping costs representing 10-30% of delivered prices and extreme volatility in freight markets, procurement teams need visibility into both components. This integration transforms Vesper from a commodity price platform into a complete landed cost intelligence system—critical for accurate budgeting and supplier selection.

How to Use It:

1. Search freight routes using origin-destination pairs in the platform search

2. Add to dashboards alongside relevant commodity prices for complete cost tracking

How to access? Freight rates are available to all Vesper users who have access to the Energy and Transport category. For more information, contact [email protected].

Clear your widget selections instantly with the new "Deselect all" button in dropdown menus. Start fresh analysis without manually removing each selection or dealing with cluttered views.

What it does: One click clears all active selections in a widget What you can do: Reset widgets to empty state for clean analysis Why it matters: Faster workflow, cleaner screens, less clicking

Find it in the dropdown menus across most widgets.

Summary: Vesper has launched Technical Analysis, a new forward-looking capability that translates complex market behavior into clear, actionable timing signals. Previously reserved for trading experts using specialized tools, technical analysis is now accessible to every procurement professional through simple, visual indicators. This feature helps teams identify optimal buying windows by analyzing price patterns and momentum, delivering straightforward signals that answer the critical question: "When should I act?"—no financial expertise required.

What's New:

• Three procurement-focused indicators that signal market timing without financial jargon

• Moving Averages show if prices are trending above or below "normal" levels

• MACD detects when price movements are accelerating or losing steam

• RSI identifies when markets are overheated or oversold, highlighting potential reversals

• Clean visual signals (green/red arrows + Interpreted text) that make complex analysis instantly understandable

Why It Matters: Fundamental data tells you why prices should move, but not when the market will react. Technical Analysis bridges this gap by revealing when markets start believing the fundamental story. In volatile markets where timing can mean the difference between saving and losing on purchases in volatile markets. These indicators help procurement teams spot early trend changes, identify optimal entry points, and avoid buying at market extremes, without requiring trading expertise.

How to Use It:

1. Add Technical Analysis to any dashboard by using the search function

2. View the summary panel showing all three indicators at a glance

3. Green arrows indicate upward pressure/momentum, red indicates downward

4. Click the extended view for in depth analysis of the indicators

5. Combine with Vesper's other forward-looking tools for complete forward looking intelligence

Related Features: Technical Analysis completes Vesper's forward-looking toolkit:

• AI Forecasting predicts where prices are headed (the "how much")

• Dashboard fundamentals explain market drivers (the "why")

• Market reports provide expert context

• Now Technical Analysis reveals entry point (the "when")

Summary: Vesper has launched Cost Models, a powerful new feature that transforms individual commodity benchmarks into complete product cost insights. This capability allows food manufacturers to combine weighted commodity benchmarks with standardized non-ingredient costs to build accurate product pricing models, delivering unprecedented visibility into true product economics.

What's New:

• Build complete product cost models by combining multiple commodity benchmarks with precise weightings

• Access industry-standard non-ingredient costs (labor, manufacturing, overhead) specific to your region

• Choose from our template library for common food products or create custom models

• Track how each component contributes to your total product cost with automatic updates whenever source prices change

Why It Matters: With record-high volatility across food commodities, understanding how ingredient changes impact finished products is critical for maintaining margins. Cost Models provide complete cost structure visibility for your entire organization: procurement teams can verify supplier price increases, finance can track margin impacts across product portfolios, and sales teams can justify price adjustments to customers with independently verified data. Non-ingredient costs can represent up to 47% of total product costs—a critical component that's now visible alongside your commodity benchmarks.

How to Use It:

1. Access Cost Models through the main dashboard menu

2. Choose between starting with a template or building a model from scratch

3. Select ingredients from your available commodities and assign precise weightings

4. Add country-specific non-ingredient costs by selecting your industry and location

5. Save your model to track cost evolution over time as prices update automatically

Related Features: Cost Models integrates seamlessly with Vesper's existing capabilities:

• Individual commodity price benchmarks (VPI, Partner prices, and Public benchmarks found in prices widgets)

• Incorporate into your own custom dashboards

• Coming in Q3 2025: Forecasting capabilities for your cost models

Summary: Vesper has enhanced dashboard customization with the ability to set unique currency and unit preferences for each individual widget. This highly requested feature allows users to display multiple markets with different measurement standards side by side in their most relevant formats.

What's New:

• Individual currency and unit settings for each widget

• Widget-specific customization that persists independently of general settings

Why It Matters: Markets operate with different standards across regions and commodities. This enhancement eliminates the need to constantly toggle between general unit settings when analyzing diverse markets simultaneously. Users can now create truly customized multi-market dashboards that present each data series in its most relevant format.

How to Use It:

1. Click the currency switcher in the top right of any widget

2. Select your preferred currency and units for that specific widget

3. Use the three dot widget menu to duplicate widgets as needed to select price sources in different currencies in the same dashboard

4. Note that the general unit selector still functions but won't override your customized widgets

Related Features: This update complements other dashboard customization capabilities:

• Custom dashboard creation

• Analytical toolbox for cross-commodity comparison

• One-click correlations checks

• Exportable charts for reporting

Summary: Vesper has significantly expanded our European electricity futures coverage with the addition of comprehensive EEX data across 15 countries. This enhancement delivers detailed visibility into power markets throughout Europe, covering both base and peak load contracts across monthly, quarterly, and yearly timeframes.

What's New:

• 86 new electricity futures contracts covering:

  • 15 European countries including Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, and more

  • Base and peak load power contracts

  • Monthly, quarterly, and yearly delivery periods

• Available across multiple widgets including:

  • Futures widgets (Graph, Table, Historical Settle Graph)

  • Price & Price Comparison widget

Why It Matters: Energy costs represent a significant component of manufacturing expenses. With this expanded coverage, users can monitor electricity futures across their operational footprint, compare price trends between regions, and develop more effective energy procurement strategies based on forward market indicators.

How to Use It:

1. Access these new products through any of the supported widgets

2. Search by country name and contract type (e.g., "German Power Base")

3. Compare electricity futures across different European markets

4. Track forward curves to inform energy procurement decisions & Market outlook

Related Features: This expansion complements our existing energy market coverage:

• Natural gas futures across major European hubs

Summary: Vesper has expanded our egg market coverage by integrating official quarterly UK egg production data. This enhancement provides critical supply information to complement our existing egg price benchmarks, delivering deeper market insights for procurement teams in a category known for significant volatility.

What's New:

• Quarterly UK egg production data from official government sources covering:

  • Eggs, Fresh

  • Egg Enriched Derivatives, Caged

  • Eggs, Free Range

• Reporting:

  • Production volumes across different egg types

  • Quarter-over-quarter production trends

  • Year-over-year production comparisons

Why It Matters: Egg markets have been extremely volatile, mainly due to supply side constraints caused by HPAI recently. With production levels directly impacting price movements. This new production data helps procurement teams anticipate market shifts by tracking supply dynamics, providing essential context for buying decisions and supplier negotiations in a challenging category.

How to Use It:

1. Navigate to the production widget in your dashboard

2. Select the relevant product in the dropdown

3. View production trends quarterly or evolutions compared to the prior years

Related Features: This update complements our comprehensive egg market coverage:

• Vesper Price Index (VPI) for 16 egg products across different production systems

• Expert market analysis for the egg sector

• Global news feed specific to eggs and poultry

• Price benchmarks across caged, barn, and free-range production systems

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