The Week In Cheese: Ahead Of the Super Bowl Prices Pick Up

As might be expected, CME milk futures are more liquid than their pungent cheese derivative cousins, but rather than whey in on why neither are suitable for speculative purposes here's what the end users are looking at.
From Pizza Marketplace, Jan. 7:

Commodities: With Super (pizza) Bowl in sight, cheese, wheat prices ignite

With less than a month to go before that U.S. pizza holiday of holidays, the Super Bowl, cheese and wheat prices were on the rise last week. Fortunately, pizza brand operators continued to save substantially on vehicle fuel prices, now down about a quarter a gallon for unleaded from last year.

Cheese

The weekly average for barrels was up about a cent, closing and averaging $1.30, while blocks shot up almost 5 cents over the previous week, to $1.42 on average at the close.

Holiday milk levels are adding to increasing cheese production nationally. One slight deviation from that norm is in the Central U.S., where U.S.D.A. contacts reported maintenance issues impeding production at multiple plants.

Pizza cheese producers have been busy with orders in the Midwest, while Western mozzarella and provolone makers are hopeful for increasing demand ahead, particularly related to the culminating football season and playoffs. 

Wheat

Compared to last week, cash bids for wheat were mostly higher. Export sales and shipments were not reported due to the government shutdown....MORE 

This is probably as good a time as any to retell a story...[cue dream sequence]

...Back in 2010 we had a post, "CME Group expands dairy complex with cheese futures" which I intro'd with:

Years ago I heard of a Chicago company that made a whey-based artificial cheese.

Apparently the operation was headed by a mad scientist type who had come up with the formula but had no marketing ability.

He was producing the stuff and not selling any, converting all the investors cash into this "analog" goop and storing it in Chicago area warehouses.

Then the Chernobyl reactor blew, the price of whey skyrocketed, I've no idea what the connection was, the company went broke and the receivers opened the warehouses to find tons of this 'cheeze', semi-molten in the summer heat.

That's what I thought of when I saw this story, tons of the stuff oozing out of bonded warehouses. No connection of course, just a visual....