Dear valued customer,

Welcome to 2023! We would like to wish all of our customers a prosperous and healthy Western and Lunar New Year!

We are intending to send a monthly Newsletter with Australian market information & news and also New Products and Monthly Specials. We hope that you find this interesting, please unsubscribe if this is not useful for you.

As the world continues to recover from COVID, there are still many challenges facing the FMCG industry that are likely to continue into this year. We see the following headwinds:

• Inflation and Price Increases – currently Australian inflation is said to be 7%, we find this unusual, based on the frequency and size of price increases that are occurring in food that have been well above 7% average. Potato Chips have risen by 40% in the past 12 months – driven by the Ukraine war (both manufacturers predominately used Oil from there) as well as the Potato shortage caused by a long period of rain and flooding. 
• Sea Freight and Air Freight prices – our best hope is that freight increases will slow down. Patricks in Australia have just announced an increase in Port Charges of $150 per TFE and this absorbs a $50 TFE drop in Sea Freight rates (HK) for Q1 and other destinations have increased. We hope that Air Freight will reduce in price as more planes start to fly.  
• Economic Challenges caused by interest rate increases – we are now seeing a decline in domestic demand for food and wine, as people are feeling the effects of interest rate increases and we expect that all of the markets that we service will be in the same position.

Despite the challenges, Pataza Pty Ltd will continue to look for savings and better deals so that we can limit the impact on our customers. 
 
Kind Regards,
The Pataza Team