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 Advanced Cost Model Collaboration & Forecasting, transforming how procurement teams build, share, and predict product costs. These features eliminate silos between team members and bring AI-powered forecasting directly into your cost models, enabling real-time collaboration on forward-looking procurement strategies.

What's New:

• Cost Model Forecasting: View your total product costs up to 12 months ahead (depending on forecast availability). Toggle between historical and forecasted values with full accuracy calculations, detailed forecast tables showing price movements per ingredient, and weighted accuracy scores.

• Cost Model Sharing: Share any cost model across your organization with granular access controls. Grant view-only permissions for stakeholder reviews or edit access for joint development, with all shared models appearing in a dedicated library.

• Cost Model Collaboration: Work collaboratively on shared models with real-time updates visible to all collaborators. Receive notifications when colleagues share models or make edits, ensuring alignment on the latest cost structures.

Why It Matters: Cost models trapped in individual spreadsheets create bottlenecks and duplicate work. Meanwhile, static historical data leaves teams reactive rather than proactive. This update enables procurement teams to collaborate on living cost models that look forward, not only backward, turning isolated analysis into coordinated teamwork with visibility into future cost drivers.

How to Use It:

1. Access forecasting by clicking the toggle in any cost model widget to switch between historical and forecast views

2. Share models by selecting "Edit" in the cost model widget, then using the share option under "Access"

3. Set permissions as either "Can view" for stakeholder visibility or "Can edit" for collaborative development

4. Find shared models in the dedicated section of your cost model dropdown, marked with company models

5. Monitor changes through the Notifications banner for updates on shared models

How to access? These features are live for all Vesper users. Contact your customer success manager at [email protected] for training on maximizing collaboration workflows.

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 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

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

Summary: New wheat flour price calculator now available, combining MATIF milling wheat prices with production costs to estimate realistic flour market values.

What's New:

• Wheat flour price calculation based on MATIF futures

• Customizable input parameters including:

  • Wheat purchase price (FOB French Ports)

  • Original protein content

  • Target protein content

  • Vital wheat gluten price

• Integration of key production cost factors:

  • Electricity consumption

  • Water usage

  • Milling efficiency rates

  • Labor costs

• Medium-sized miller operational model

• Located in Calculations Page under Grains & Feed

Why It Matters: Raw wheat prices tell only part of the story. This calculator helps you understand the full cost structure of flour production, enabling more informed negotiations and better prediction of price movements. Best of all, you can adjust the parameters to match your specific situation and market conditions.

How to Use It:

1. How to Use It:

   1. Navigate to the Calculations Page

   2. Select Grains & Feed category

   3. Choose "Wheat Flour Price - MATIF" calculator

   4. Adjust the input parameters to match your needs

   5. View the calculated theoretical EXW flour price

Part of our expanded grains coverage in Q4 2024, which includes:

• New import/export flow data for grains and flour

• Enhanced production data coverage

• Additional benchmark pricing for grains and flour products

Together, these tools give you a complete view of the market from trade flows to final product costs.

Summary: Major expansion of global import/export data coverage across grains, nuts & seeds, and food ingredients - helping you track trade flows and assess supply & demand dynamics.

What's New:

• Grains & Flour

  • Complete trade data for wheat, corn, and specialty grains

  • Coverage of various flour types and grain derivatives

  • Bakery product trade flows

• Nuts, Seeds & Dried Fruits

  • Comprehensive data for tree nuts (both in-shell and shelled)

  • Coverage of dried fruits and specialty seeds

  • Full trade flow visibility for key origins

• Food Ingredients

  • Starches & Gluten

  • Natural & artificial thickeners

  • Egg products & derivatives

  • Essential oils & flavorings

  • Food additives & preservatives

  • Sauces & condiments

Why It Matters: Import/export data provides crucial market context beyond prices. These trade flows help you:

• Assess global supply & demand dynamics

• Track market movements across regions

• Identify emerging trends in your category

• Make more informed buying decisions

How to Use It:

1. Navigate to the Import/Export widgets

2. Select your category and product

3. View import/export flows through our interactive visualizations

4. Use one of 5 different widgets to make trade data actionable

Note: This is our largest trade data expansion beyond our existing coverage in Dairy, Oils & Fats, and Sugar, with more categories coming soon.

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