Rains in Vietnam hit coffee quality

Farmers in Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, struggled to dry beans after heavy rains lashed out the country's growing area, while offers from Indonesia were scarce as London prices dropped. The biggest floods in decades threatened Vietnam's central provinces on Wednesday following a deadly typhoon that skipped the Central Highlands coffee belt but brought torrential rain just as farmers began picking the cherries.
"You can pick the cherries but you can't dry them because of the rains," said a regional dealer who trades Vietnamese and Indonesian beans. The cheeries will also ripen earlier than usual if there's so much water," said a regional dealer, who trades Vietnamese and Indonesian beans.
"The concern is more on the quality. I don't think there are problems with transportation and all that. The areas affected by the storm are not really the coffee area." Typhoon Ketsana, which already wreaked havoc in the Philippines, slammed into Vietnam on Tuesday dumping torrential rain that left 294,000 homes destroyed, damaged or submerged by floods.
Around 357,000 people in 10 provinces were evacuated. Some dealers said a small quantity of beans from the new October-September crop year started to enter the market and were offered at a discount of $95 to $100 a tonne to London's January contract - unchanged from two weeks ago. Beans from the previous crop were also steady at $50 to $60 below London's benchmark November robusta contract, which dropped $15 to end at $1,390 per tonne on Tuesday, within sight of a 1-month low of $1,381 hit last week. A recovery in the dollar has weighed on coffee futures.
On Tuesday the government estimated Vietnam's coffee exports in the crop year to September 2009 rose 15.8 percent from the previous season to 1.13 million tonnes, or 18.85 million bags. Vietnam may still have 1.45 million bags to carry over to the 2009/2010 crop year but dealers said many farmers still refused to sell, hoping for a rebound in the international market.
In Indonesia, the world's second-largest robusta producer, trading had yet to return to normal after last week's Eid al-Fitr Muslim holiday. Indonesia is also the world's most populous Muslim nation. "Many beans are in the hands of farmers and middlemen, while exporters could not get enough coffee to ship. The price in London is falling, while the rupiah is strengthening, so people don't want to sell," said the regional dealer.