Vesper  Updates

Major US Price Expansion: 286 New USDA Series

by Vesper Team
New
Data
Vegetables & Pulses
Fruit
Meat & Poultry
Food Ingredients
Grains & Feed
Oils & Fats
Herbs & Spices
Chemicals
Sugar & Sweeteners

Vesper now includes 286 new price series from 13 USDA MARS reports, one of the most widely referenced public pricing sources in US agricultural markets. This is our largest single USDA expansion to date.

What's New:

  • Vegetables & Pulses: 107 new price series including potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli, squash, black beans, pinto beans, lentils, chickpeas, and yellow peas

  • Fruits: 80 new price series covering apples (Gala, Honeycrisp, Fuji, Cosmic Crisp and more), oranges, grapes, strawberries, peaches, pears, bananas, kiwi, and watermelon, including organic variants

  • Meat & Poultry: 39 new price series for beef primal cuts (ribeye, tenderloin, strip loin, chuck, round), lamb (rack, leg, shoulder), turkey (whole, breast, drumsticks, wings), hog, and cattle live/dressed weight prices

  • Food Ingredients: 29 new price series for eggs (caged and free-range across multiple sizes and regions) and ethanol

  • Grains & Feed: 14 new price series for alfalfa, corn (food and feed grade), soybean, DDGS, corn gluten, cottonseed, canola meal, and blood meal

  • Oils & Fats: 8 new price series including choice white grease and animal fat derivatives

  • Herbs & Spices: 5 new price series for jalapeño, serrano, poblano, anaheim chili peppers, and garlic

  • Chemicals: 3 new price series

  • Sugar: 1 new price series

See the complete product list for all 286 series.

Why It Matters:

USDA MARS reports are among the most commonly referenced pricing benchmarks in US agricultural markets. These 286 series bring that coverage directly into Vesper, so you can track US prices for fresh produce, proteins, grains, feed ingredients, and eggs alongside your existing European and global series, all in one place.

How to Use It:

  • Prices Widget: Search for specific products (e.g., "beef ribeye" or "apples Honeycrisp") to bookmark USDA MARS prices alongside your existing series

  • Price Comparison: Compare USDA US prices with European or global equivalents for with different prodcut names

  • Cost Models: Add USDA ingredient prices to your cost models for a more complete picture of US-sourced product costs

How to access?

Add to new or existing dashboards using the search function, or contact your Customer Success Manager at [email protected] for any questions.

121 new EU and UK packaging price series

by Vesper Team
New
Data
Packaging

Vesper now covers 121 monthly packaging price series across EU and UK markets, including 76 products created for this expansion. Coverage spans paper, plastics, glass, and metals.

What's new:

  • 121 monthly packaging price series, now live
  • 76 newly created packaging products
  • Materials covered: paper and cardboard (corrugated, cartonboard, kraft), plastics (PET, HDPE, flexible films), glass (bottles, containers), metals (tinplate, aluminium)
  • Geographic scope: EU and UK markets

Why this matters:

Packaging is one of the largest indirect cost categories for food manufacturers. Price swings in paperboard or PET can move margins just as much as ingredient costs. With independent benchmarks for packaging materials, you can track costs over time and verify supplier proposals against market data.

How to Use It:

  • Prices Widget: search by packaging material, product type, or market
  • Price Comparison: compare packaging prices across materials or regions
  • Cost Models: add packaging cost lines alongside ingredient costs in a single model

How to access?

Add to new or existing dashboards using the search function, or contact your Customer Success Manager at [email protected].

Bring Your Own Data (BYOD)

by Vesper Team, Product Marketing
New
Vesper Toolbox
Data
Cost Models

Upload your own budgets, purchase prices, and supplier quotes directly into Vesper. Your internal data now lives alongside global market intelligence, all in one place.

What's new

  • Add your own data via manual entry or CSV upload

  • Store budgets, contract prices, supplier quotes, or any internal pricing data

  • Unlimited series and products with no caps on what you can bring in

  • All your uploads organized in a new dedicated "Your Data" section

  • Access your data in the Prices widget, Price Comparison, and Cost Models

  • Use the full Vesper toolbox on your own data: visualize spreads, calculate averages, and add notes directly in graphs

  • Use your data as inputs for cost models and custom formulas

Why this matters

Vesper already lets you build custom benchmarks using formulas and cost models. Now you can go further. Bring in your actual purchase history, budget targets, and supplier offers to see the full picture.

  • Track performance: Compare what you paid against what the market did

  • Spot opportunities: See where your prices diverge from benchmarks over time

  • Centralize everything: Stop toggling between spreadsheets and Vesper. Make it your single source of truth.

Your data stays yours

Everything you upload is siloed, secure, and never shared with other users or used in any Vesper Price Index. Your competitive information remains private.

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Cost models in Price comparison

by Vesper Team, Product Marketing
New
Vesper Toolbox
Cost Models
Data
Vesper Price Index (VPI)

You can now compare your cost models directly against actual prices and other cost models in the Price Comparison widget.

What's new

  • Cost models now appear as selectable series in the Price Comparison widget

  • Select cost models from the product dropdown, labeled with their cost model name

  • View cost model historical data alongside multiple other cost models, price series, or any combination of both

  • Same visualization and interaction as product prices (line charts, tooltips, trends)

  • Note: Notes cannot be added to cost models

Why this matters

For finished goods, this bridges cost modeling and price analysis:

  • Compare different recipe options to find the most cost-effective formulation

  • Validate actual paid prices against theoretical cost models to spot inefficiencies

  • Track variance trends over time to identify negotiation opportunities

For commodity and ingredient buyers, this opens up new ways to analyze contract structures:

  • Build indices for weighted baskets and compare against other indices or your own prices

  • Model multiplier or fixed cost-plus structures on top of any benchmark

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Packaging News Category

by Vesper Team, Product Marketing
New
Mobile
Packaging
News & Alerts
AI

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

Read the latest packaging news

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Cost Model Forecast & Collaboration

by Vesper Team, Product Marketing
New
Cost Models
Forecasting & Outlook
AI

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.

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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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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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Global Import/Export Data Expansion

by Vesper Team
Data
Nuts, Seeds & Dried Fruits
Bakery
Grains & Feed
Food Ingredients

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.

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