How to see the seasonality of imports

To see the seasonality of imports, look at the number or value of shipments by month over several full years and check which months are high or low every year, not just once. A pattern that repeats is a season; a single spike is usually one deal. On Orion Markets a market report shows this as a heat map of shipments by month and year and names the peak months and the low season.

Seasonality tells you when buyers place orders, when to have goods in stock and when it makes sense to call. Below is how to read it, where it misleads and how to use it in sales and stock planning.

What seasonality in imports means

Many products are bought unevenly over the year. Fresh fruit and vegetables follow harvests, heaters and fans follow the weather, school goods and gifts follow the calendar, building materials follow the construction season. Importers buy before demand peaks, so import peaks usually come a few weeks or months before the peak in shop sales.

Seasons differ by country. The same product can peak in different months in two neighbouring markets because of the climate, local production or holidays. So look at the season of the country you are selling to, not at your own sales calendar.

Step 1. Choose a narrow code and one country

Seasonality is visible only when the product is defined precisely. A broad code mixes products with different seasons, and the peaks cancel each other out. Use the most specific code for your product and look at one country and one direction (imports) at a time. How to choose the code is covered in How to find the HS code for a product.

Step 2. Read the heat map

In Analyze markets by product you choose the country, the direction, a period of at least two or three full years and the product code and get a market report. One of its blocks is Supply seasonality: a heat map where each row is a year and each column is a month. The colour of each cell runs from low to maximum, so the busy months stand out at a glance. A report can be built in US dollars or in net weight (kilograms).

Under the map the report names two groups of months:

• Peak months: months whose average over the years is well above the average month.
• Low season: months whose average is well below the average month.

"Well above" here has a precise meaning. The report first averages each calendar month over all available years, then compares each month with the average month and the usual spread between months (the standard deviation). A month above the average plus one standard deviation is a peak; a month below the average minus one standard deviation is low season. If no month stands out, the report says that no anomalies were detected: the product is bought fairly evenly over the year.

Read the map in both directions. Down a column you see whether a month is high every year or only once. Along a row you see how one year developed and whether the whole year was higher or lower than the others.

Example: tomatoes in Kazakhstan

Fresh tomatoes (code 070200) imported into Kazakhstan show a clear season. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 Kazakhstan recorded roughly 850 to 1,300 import shipments a month from March to May, and only about 100 to 300 a month from July to September. From October the numbers rose again. The picture in tonnes is the same, only sharper.

The pattern is the same in all three years, so it is a real season, not a one-off. A likely reason is local production: in summer, tomatoes grown in the region are in season and imports fall. For an exporter of tomatoes this means the main selling window is winter and spring, and talks with importers should happen before it, in autumn. Offers in July are likely to come at the worst time.

Value, weight or number of shipments

The season can look different depending on what you measure:

• Weight is closest to physical demand: how many tonnes the market takes.
• Value also moves with prices. Out of season, prices are often higher, so a fall in tonnes can look smaller in dollars.
• Number of shipments shows how active buyers are, but a consignment of several products is usually counted once for each product, and shipment size changes over the year.

If value and weight give different peaks, the difference is usually price. For stock and production planning, rely on weight; for revenue planning, on value. More on how these figures are counted is in How to read foreign trade figures.

Where seasonality misleads

• Partial years. The latest year usually has only some months. The report leaves out months that are not yet in the data, so they do not count as zeros, but the months it has are averaged over one more year than the months it lacks. Compare a partial year with the same months of earlier years.
• Short history. With one year of data you cannot tell a season from a coincidence. You need at least two, better three, full years in which the same months stand out. For countries added to our coverage recently, the map may have one row and only part of a year; such a map shows activity, not a season. The periods for each country are on the data coverage page.
• One large deal. One delivery of equipment for one plant can make a month look like a peak. If a peak appears in only one year, treat it as a possible one-off, not as a season.
• Moving holidays. Holidays that follow the lunar calendar move every year: Ramadan starts about 11 days earlier each year, and Chinese New Year falls between late January and mid-February. The peak moves with them and can fall into different months.
• Changes in coverage. If the data stops covering part of the trade, the numbers fall for reasons unrelated to the season. For example, since July 2025 Orion Markets data for Russia covers only trade with Kazakhstan, and reports for Russia show a notice about it.
• Border date, not sale date. Shipment data records when goods crossed the border. Goods that travel by sea for six weeks arrive in the data six weeks after the order was shipped.

How to use seasonality in sales planning

• When to contact buyers. Work backwards from the peak import months: subtract the transit time and the buyer's usual decision time. If imports peak in March and goods travel for a month, buyers choose suppliers in December or January. Your offer should arrive before that.
• When to come back. If a buyer says "not now", note the next pre-season and write again then. How to plan follow-ups for a whole buyer list is covered in How to build a buyer list for cold outreach.
• Which markets to combine. Markets with different seasons can keep your production busy all year. A low season in one country can be the peak in another, especially across the hemispheres.
• Prices and promotions. In the low season buyers are fewer and more sensitive to price. A trial lot at a lower price can win a customer before the next season.

How to use it in stock and production planning

• Stock. If you hold stock in the buyer's country or near it, build it up before the peak months and run it down into the low season.
• Production. Plan raw material purchases and production runs so that goods are ready to ship before buyers place their pre-season orders.
• Freight. Freight rates and container availability have their own seasons. When many shippers send goods at the same time, book transport early.
• Cash. A season means that money comes in unevenly. Plan for the months when you produce and pay suppliers but have not yet been paid.

What is open and what needs a plan

Building a market report is free, and shares, percentages, trends and the number of companies are visible right away. The real heat map opens with the report on a paid plan. Until then the map shows sample data with a notice, so the peak months shown are not real. The free sample reports in Ready-made research are open in full to registered users, so you can see how the block works before you pay.

In Find new export markets, the full analysis of each country also has a chart of shipments over the last 12 months. It is useful for comparing several markets for the same product, but one year is not enough to confirm a season: check it in a market report with several years.

Checklist

1. Is the code narrow enough that one product with one season is counted?
2. Do the same months stand out in at least two or three full years?
3. Could a peak in a single year be one large deal rather than the season?
4. Is the latest year complete, and are you comparing the same months?
5. Do value and weight show the same peak? If not, is price the reason?
6. Have you subtracted transit time and the buyer's decision time from the import peak?

To see the season for your product, build a report in Analyze markets by product for the country you sell to.