The robusta coffee crop in southern Sumatra, Indonesia’s main growing area, will be 1.1 percent smaller in the 2013-14 season compared with a year earlier, according to Amsterdam-based trader Nedcoffee BV.
Output in the area will be about 335,000 metric tons in 2013-14, the trader, which has a factory in Lampung, Indonesia, said in a report e-mailed today. Coffee production in the whole of Indonesia, the third-biggest robusta grower, reached a three- year high in 2012-13 as the crop recovered from too much rain the previous year, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed. The 2013-14 season there will start in April.
“The weather in the coffee-growing areas is still favorable for the development of the beans,” Nedcoffee said in the report, referring to the southern Sumatra robusta coffee crop. “Every day rain falls in the afternoon and night and sunshine during daytime is giving the right balance between dryness and moisture level for the coffee bean to grow.”
In Vietnam, the world’s top robusta grower, farmers sold about 50 percent of their crop before the Tet holidays, which mark the country’s Lunar New Year and ended yesterday, Nedcoffee estimates. Local prices were at 40,800 dong ($1.96) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) on Feb. 6, before the holidays, data from the Daklak Trade & Tourism Center on Bloomberg showed.
“It is expected that it would take 42,000 dong a kilogram to trigger selling again,” the trader, which also has offices in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, said in the report.
Vietnam still has 1 million tons of coffee to export and almost 260,000 tons are already in traders’ warehouses, according to the report.
Source: bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/indonesia-southern-sumatra-robusta-coffee-crop-seen-falling-1-1-.html
