Vesper  Updates

Cost Models: Turn commodity benchmarks into product pricing

by Vesper Team
New
Food Manufacturing
Retail
Cost Models

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

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Fruits, Vegetables & Pulses News

by Vesper Team
New
Vegetables & Pulses
Fruit
News & Alerts

Summary: Vesper has expanded its news coverage with two dedicated categories: Vegetables & Pulses and Fruits. These new sections deliver focused, timely information on fresh produce markets, including harvest conditions, logistics updates, weather disruptions, pricing trends, and market developments.

What's New:

  • Dedicated news category for Vegetables & Pulses

  • Dedicated news category for Fruits

  • Comprehensive coverage of global fresh produce markets

  • Integration with existing news filtering and alert capabilities

Why It Matters: Fresh produce represents critical input markets for many of our core users. These new categories significantly deepen our current coverage, which has primarily focused on price benchmarks until now. By adding dedicated news streams, users gain deeper insights and earlier warning signals about market developments before they impact prices. This expanded coverage provides essential visibility into volatile produce markets, helping users anticipate supply disruptions, track pricing pressures, and identify emerging trends. This expansion responds directly to user feedback requesting more comprehensive coverage across the complete ingredient spectrum.


How to Use It:

  1. Find the new categories in the News section of the platform

  2. Set up custom alerts for specific commodities within these categories

  3. Filter news by these categories to focus on produce-specific updates

Related Features: These news categories complement Vesper's existing offerings:

  • Smart news filtering and aggregation

  • Custom news alerts

  • Fruits and Vegetables price benchmarks on the Dashboard

Read the latest news

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Cheddar Curd VPI (CIF SEA) Benchmark

by Vesper Team
New
Dairy
Vesper Price Index (VPI)
Data

Summary: Vesper has strengthened its dairy portfolio with a new weekly Vesper Price Index (VPI) benchmark for Cheddar Curd (CIF Southeast Asia). This proprietary benchmark fills a critical gap in regional cheese trade visibility, especially for Oceania-origin products moving into key Asian markets.

What's New:

  • Exclusive weekly VPI price benchmark for Cheddar Curd with CIF Southeast Asia delivery basis

  • First reliable price reference in a region lacking formal cheese futures markets

  • Full integration with existing dairy dashboards and pricing tools

Why It Matters: With no futures market for cheese in the APAC, market participants have struggled to benchmark pricing or implement effective hedging strategies. This exclusive VPI benchmark provides essential price transparency in a market where Oceania exports a significant share of its cheddar production to Asian buyers. By introducing this reference point, we're responding to the need for reliable pricing data in markets lacking formal pricing infrastructure.

How to Use It:

  1. Find the new Cheddar Curd (CIF SEA) benchmark in the pricing widgets

  2. Add it to price widgets to analyze spread between origin and destination markets

  3. Track weekly updates to identify emerging trends in regional dairy trade flows

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

  • Global and regional cheese price benchmarks

  • Import/export widgets mapping supply and demand in trade flows

  • Price spread tool for cross-regional analysis

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Extended Forecast Horizon - Dairy, Oils&Fats, Sugar

by Vesper Team
Dairy
Oils & Fats
Sugar & Sweeteners
Forecasting & Outlook

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.

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UK Egg Production Data Now Live

by Vesper Team
New
Data
Bakery
Food Ingredients
Sauces & Condiments

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

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Expanded Cocoa Market Coverage

by Vesper Team
New
Cocoa
Chocolate, Confectionery & Ice Cream
Market Analysis

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

Read the latest report

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Introducting Brazilian Instituto de Economia Agrícola (IEA) Source

by Vesper Team
New
Data
Nuts, Seeds & Dried Fruits
Meat & Poultry
Vegetables & Pulses

Added daily Brazilian public prices from Instituto de Economia Agrícola (IEA), Brazil's leading agricultural economics institute, expanding our coverage of key food commodities with local market data.

Why it Matters: Brazil is a major global producer and price setter for multiple food commodities. Direct access to daily IEA data provides unprecedented visibility into local market dynamics, helping procurement teams better understand price movements at origin and optimize sourcing strategies.

What's New:

  • Daily price updates across multiple categories:

    • Meat & Poultry: Chicken cuts (breast fillet, thigh, leg quarters), Pork cuts (loin, steak), Beef cuts (ribeye, round eye, brisket)

    • Nuts & Seeds: Peanuts in shell

    • Vegetables: Garlic (violet, violet size 0.7)

  • Key features:

    • Daily frequency updates

    • 4 years of historical data

    • Local market prices from São Paulo state

    • Original source data direct from IEA

How to Use It:

  1. Access Brazilian benchmarks in the Prices widgets by searching for the product name or filtering by BR-IEA source

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Cocoa Market Fundamentals: Production & Import/Export

by Vesper Team
New
Cocoa
Chocolate, Confectionery & Ice Cream

Summary: Cocoa production data from 8 major producing countries and import/export data for key products and derivatives added to bring more transparency to the cocoa supply chain amidst record volatility.

What's New:

  • Production volumes from:

    • West Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria

    • Latin America: Brazil, Ecuador

    • Asia Pacific: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea

  • Global trade flow data for:

    • Cocoa beans

    • Cocoa powder, butter, and mass

    • Chocolate products

Why It Matters: Production volumes from major origins like Ivory Coast and Ghana often indicate future price movements. Combined with trade flow data, you can better anticipate market shifts and understand the influence of fundamental drivers on market dynamics.

How to Use It:

  1. Find production data in your Production widget

  2. Access trade flows through the Import/Export widgets (Pro tip: % Change and YTD figures can be found in dropdown)

  3. Filter by country or product as needed

Don't have access to Cocoa yet?Contact the Vesper Team

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New Cocoa Ratios Table: Track Product Values Daily 📊

by Vesper Team
New
Cocoa
Chocolate, Confectionery & Ice Cream

Summary: New Cocoa Ratios Table tracks daily cocoa bean prices, regional premiums, and butter/powder ratios, helping you understand product value correlations.

What's New:

  • Daily updated view of:

    • Cocoa bean prices by origin

    • Butter and powder ratios

    • Regional premiums

    • ICE futures prices

  • Updates after ICE EU market close

Why It Matters: Cocoa butter and powder prices move independently based on market demand. This table helps you track these movements and their impact on product costs, critical for sourcing decisions.

How to Use It:

  1. Navigate to the Cocoa section

  2. Open the Ratios Table widget

  3. Compare ratios across products and regions

Don’t have access yet?Reach out to the Vesper Team

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