Buenos Aires, March 31 (NA) – Yerba mate sales fell 9% year-on-year in February, becoming the worst month in the last five years for the commercialization of this key product for Argentine tables. Mills dispatched only 19,261,816 kilos, according to the Argentine News Agency. According to the National Institute of Yerba Mate (INYM), the decline in domestic consumption began in July 2025 compared to the same month of the previous year. Between July 2024 and February 2025, 182,400,219 kilos were consumed; and in the last eight months, demand plummeted to 169,192,741 kilos, a 7.3% drop. If only consumption data for January and February of this year is compared to the same period in 2025, the decline is 5.5%, as it fell from 43,151,900 kilos to just 40,662,630. As for exports, at the beginning of the year, 6,299,095 kilos were shipped, only 32,849 kilos less than in January and February 2025. March statistics will be key to determining if exports can maintain last year's level, when they reached 58,894,622 kilos, a figure never before achieved. If both markets are taken together, total demand for Argentine yerba mate reached 46,961,725 kilos in the bimonthly period, with a negative balance of 2.25 percent. The prices of the raw material are well below the production costs estimated by the National Institute of Yerba Mate.
