NEW YORK: Orange juice futures closed lower for the fourth straight session on Friday due to investor sales as players unwound positions given the uncertainty over the US Food and Drug Administration's testing of Brazilian orange juice imports.
The key March frozen concentrated orange juice contract slid 2.55 cents to settle at $2.0145 per lb, trading from $1.98 to $2.045. It was an inside day since the range was within Thursday's $1.972 to $2.078 band.
On the week, the market was down almost 4.5 percent.
Benchmark March hit an all-time peak at $2.2695 per lb last week on speculation the United States may ban Brazilian juice imports intensified.
The Price Group senior analyst Jack Scoville said investors who had bid the market up on the chance that the FDA could prohibit Brazilian juice imports were liquidating positions.
"(These guys) are taking cash off the table," he said.
Investors were getting wary about the juiced market and are reducing their exposure. Open interest, an indicator of investor exposure, stood at 25,846 lots, the lowest since Dec. 30, 2010, data from ICE Futures US showed.
US health regulators blocked 20 shipments of orange juice, 11 of them from top producer Brazil, because they contain traces of a prohibited fungicide.
Traders said that with each day that passes by without a definitive decision on juice imports, orange juice futures will remain volatile.
Brazil is the world's top citrus producer and accounts for half of all US juice imports and 10 percent of all US supplies.
Brazilian juice is used by leading US producers such as Pepsico's Tropicana and Coca Cola's Minute Maid in a blend with oranges from Florida.
Volume traded Friday hit over 2,200 lots in late New York business, almost a third under the 30-day norm, Thomson Reuters preliminary data showed.
On Thursday, the exchange said 2,666 lots were traded.
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