Pepper prices – spot and futures – continued to fall on selling pressure on Tuesday. Prices are down because the material arriving now is of substandard quality, heavily moisturised, highly mouldy and of low bulk density, the trade alleged.

Therefore, it is being sold at discounted prices, they said. Pepper from Idukki was sold at ₹712 a kg while that from Wayanad was traded at ₹710. Some of the re-processors were interested to sell at ₹715 but buyers were not ready, they said.

On the terminal market, 62 tonnes of pepper arrived and that were traded. All the active contracts on the IPSTA platform fell by ₹1,000 a quintal each from the previous closing. Spot prices dropped by ₹200 to ₹70,000 (ungarbled) and ₹73,000 (garbled). Export prices remained steady at $12,100 a tonne cf for Europe and $12,350 for the US.