Brazil's upcoming 2012-13 arabica coffee crop will reach to 55.0 million 60-kg bags, giant German coffee trader Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG) said in a report seen by Reuters on Friday. This is lower than the forecast of 55.8 million bags made by Brazilian exporter Comexim on February 3 and well over official Brazilian government forecasts of 49 million to 52.3 million bags.
A Reuters poll on January 25 had forecast a crop of 55.1 million bags. Brazil is the world's top coffee producer and the market is eagerly awaiting supplies from the 2012/13 harvest which comes in a higher-output year. Brazil has an up-down cycle which causes output to rise and fall in two-year cycles. "The consensus is that a bumper crop of 60 million bags is no longer possible although (the) crop is not a disaster," Neumann said in the report.
Neumann said its working number is for a 2012/13 Brazilian crop of 55.0 million bags, 8.1 million bags more than it estimates for 2011/12 but this would be below in the last up-cycle crop in the 2010/11 year, which many analysts put around 60 million bags.
Exporters generally view the Brazilian government's numbers as conservative and work with numbers several million bags higher. "Rains appeared to have returned in (the) nick of time in the arabica areas of Brazil, provoking a huge flowering in October," the Neumann report said. "The fixings from the flowering, however, have been disappointing ."
Colombia's coffee harvest continues to disappoint, Neumann said. Colombia, the world's top producer of high-quality Arabica beans faces a third consecutive year of lower-than-expected coffee production as bad weather, fungus and a tree renovation programme keep output below historic averages of 11 million bags.
Heavy rains in October and November have damaged the main Colombian crop and disrupted the flowering for the Mitaca (secondary) crop, Neumann said. "A strong recovery is now unlikely and 2011/12 production is forecast at 8.7 million bags, only slightly higher than in 2010/11," Neumann said. Neumann put Colombia's 2010/11 crop at 8.5 million bags.
"Colombia was dry in December and January so there are hopes for a good 2012/13 main crop flowering," it said. Vietnam's 2011/12 crop was likely to rise to 23.3 million bags, up 3.8 million bags from the previous season, Neumann forecast. The mean estimate of Vietnam's 2011/12 crop in the Reuters poll on January 25 was 20.3 million bags. "Vietnamese coffee farms look in excellent condition," it said. The crop rise in Vietnam will be helped by a high percentage of large screen-size beans, it said. Neumann is one of the world's largest coffee trading groups with global operations.
Comments
Comments are closed.