Speedwell Weather expands commodity weather risk data product

Speedwell Weather, a provider of weather data, forecasts, software, analytics and consultancy to the weather risk management and derivatives market, has expanded its Speedwell Commodity Product to enhance the granularity of data available.

The Commodity Product is used to inform anyone for who visibility of weather forecast and historical data is important in commodities, enabling better weather risk management and risk transfer decisions to be made.

Speedwell Weather explains that this; “Uniquely combines a highly quantitative approach to understanding historic and forecast weather in crop areas, based on our archive of tens of thousands of world-wide weather data sets.”

In this latest update Speedwell Weather has increased the density of surface observation data in the important coffee producing regions of Brazil and Columbia.

“By expanding our access to surface observations in the key growing regions we are better able to understand the weather conditions impacting the crop. For each new observation point we are offering the standard suite of services including historical cleaned observations, ongoing cleaned observations, and Speedwell downscaled forecasts,” the firm said.

The Brazilian coffee crop accounts for about 33% of global coffee production, as such the importance of it is undeniable. The latest additions to the Speedwell Weather product focus mainly on southern Minas Gerias and the surrounding areas where 60% of Brazilian Arabica coffee beans are grown as well as the important Medillin, Armenia and Manizales (MAM) region in Colombia which is where the famed soft Arabica beans are grown.

Daniel Greenstein, Meteorological Analyst at Speedwell Weather commented; “After a significant drought affected Brazilian coffee production last year, 2015 has started off dry. Speedwell’s enhanced Brazilian coffee index will give users a better idea if more trouble is on the horizon.”

Speedwell Weather data is used by weather risk management and trading firms, as well as insurance and reinsurance companies that provide capacity to the parametric or weather index-linked risk markets, as well as directly to companies involved in weather-exposed industries, such as energy and agriculture.

Access to the Speedwell Commodity Product statistical analysis and daily commentary reports provide commodity and weather traders with a unique perspective on the weather impacting the health of the crop. The enhanced granularity and availability of surface observations could also be put to good use in designing weather risk transfer tools to hedge the weather risk for coffee growers or commodities operators.