At least until the early 1960s, trade in cloves was carried out in the traditional, familiar manner, by large numbers of shipping agents, merchants, dealers and brokers. Since the political changes in Zanzibar in 1964, however, the situation has changed somewhat. The role of merchants and dealers has diminished primarily because the supply prices were more rigidly fixed after the Zanzibar upheaval than had previously been the case, and the general feeling in the trade was that little or no further profit could be made.
Not much is known about the structure of Madagascar’s export trade, but it seems to have been more centralized than was the case in pre-revolution Zanzibar, and in any case the price of cloves from Madagascar had always tended to follow that of Zanzibar cloves, a situation which continued to apply after 1964.
At present the main intermediary between producer or shipper and user is the broker or agent who works on a commission basis, charging maybe 1 -12 per cent for his services. There are still some dealers who buy and sell on a speculative basis, but they are now relatively uncommon in the clove trade.
At the same time the Zanzibaris, realizing that they were in a sellers’ market, introduced a heavy special duty on cloves, and the net resultant effect on the price was inevitable. Of the existence of severe shortages there can he no doubt. As Tables 5.11 and 5.12 show, sales from Zanzibar between 1965 and 1970 exceeded production during the same period, the difference being accounted for by the depletion of Zanzibar’s stockpile which in 1971 stood at around 5 000 tonnes.
In spite of this apparent historical decline in domestic usage, substantial quantities of cloves are still bought from supermarkets, grocers and market stalls for use in such traditional applications as apple dishes, and baked hams. Whole cloves are still widely used in all areas, but in the advanced Western nations there is evidence of an increasing preference for ground cloves. Normally the product is sold in cardboard or plastic drums of 21 g or 28 g capacity. The retail price in 1974 varied between 0.10 and 0.16 per 28 g package, compared with 0.04 six years previously, and the circumstances of this price rise have already been discussed. Per capita consumption of cloves in this form is continuing to decrease before the advance of ready-prepared foodstuffs, which contain a much lower proportion of the clove spice.
A new trade agreement was supposed to have been drawn up between Indonesia and Zanzibar in 1973, and although no details of the agreement are available, it is clear that virtually no cloves were exported from Zanzibar while these negotiations were in progress, as a result of which dealers and end-users are now looking more than ever to Madagascar, rather than Zanzibar, as the world’s most reliable source of cloves. The apparent decline in Zanzibar’s clove production potential has, of course, already been referred to.
