Asian coffee: robusta supply tightens on slow Indonesia, Vietnam exports

Robusta supply from Asia tightened as rising domestic consumption cut into Indonesia's exports, traders said on Thursday, while shipments from top producer Vietnam hit a five-year low.
Indonesia's output growth has not kept up with rising consumption there - even with an early start to the harvest - exacerbating the undersupply. In Vietnam, low global robusta prices have discouraged farmers and speculators in Vietnam since late February.
Vietnam and Indonesia together account for a quarter of the world's coffee exports.
"Farmers in Vietnam have been controlling well their sales this year," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. "If they sold quickly, prices would have crashed further."
The ICE July contract closed down 0.1 percent at $1,818 a tonne on Wednesday, having dropped more than 7 percent since the year began.
The contract was trading up 0.11 percent at $1,820 a tonne at 0908 GMT on Thursday.
Vietnamese robusta grade 2, 5 percent black and broken were quoted at premiums of $50-$60 a tonne this week to the July contract, narrowing from premiums of $50-$70 last Thursday.
Beans grade 1, screen 16, equivalent to Sumatran beans, stood at $120-$130/tonne above the July contract.
Vietnam's coffee exports in the first half of the 2014/2015 crop dropped a quarter from a year ago to nearly 650,000 tonnes, based on customs data, the lowest since the 2009/2010 crop year.
In Indonesia, Sumatran robusta grade 4, 80 defects rose to $1,970-$2,000 a tonne, free-on-board Lampung, up from $1,830-$1,850 a week ago.
The rise reflected stronger demand, with most of the fresh cherries bought by Indonesian producers to meet domestic consumption growing at 6-8 percent a year.
"Indonesia has picked just around 10-20 percent of the crop and the fresh coffee is arriving very slowly," said a trader at an Asian firm dealing with both Vietnam and Indonesia origins. "Any fresh beans are bought right away by domestic producers."
While the harvest started in late March, the main picking period in Indonesia's major growing region of Lampung could begin in June, a month earlier than last year, farmers and stakeholders said.
Indonesia's domestic consumption is projected to rise nearly 8 percent to 3.05 million bags in the 2014/2015 crop, based on a USDA attache report, equivalent to about 30 percent of the country's output.