Vietnam has sold nearly all of its coffee stocks, prompting exporters to re-purchase beans from trading firms to fulfil commitments for nearby shipment or offer next crop's beans for delivery from December, traders said.
Exporters were offering robusta for delivery in December or January at discounts of $110 to $120 per tonne below London robusta futures contracts, they said on Tuesday.
"The present stock is nearly out or a very small quantity remains, so several exporters already started offering for further shipments," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. "Buyers are not willing to accept such offers due to the distant time, and they also expect discounts to widen," he added.
Exporters who are short of beans for nearby shipments have had to buy from the warehouses of several foreign and Vietnamese trading firms in or around Ho Chi Minh City, traders said. "There are only few trading firms that can offer a small volume to rescue exporters," another trader IM the city said.
In Daklak, Vietnam's key coffee growing province, a kg of robusta rose 500 dong to 27,500 dong ($1.70) on Tuesday, tracking a gain in London overnight, but still below last week's peak of 28,300 dong. Benchmark September closed up $42 at $1,827 per tonne, still down from the June 22 high of $1,945.
While quotations for outright shipments were absent, the export prices based on domestic markets would stay at $1,740-1,750 a tonne, free-on-board basis, against $1,730-1,770 a tonne a week ago.
Vietnam's coffee shipments between October 2006 and July 2007 jumped 44.3 percent from a year to 18.52 million 60-kilogram bags or 1.11 million tonnes, the government said last week.
Based on the export figures, Vietnam would still have 2.3 million bags, or 138,000 tonnes, of stocks. State weather forecasters said the western part of the Central Highlands coffee belt would suffer from a hotter-than-usual period between now and September, the last month before the new harvest starts. Traders though said overall production would be unaffected because the weather forecast was not for the main growing area.
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