Prices for Kenyan coffee were largely unchanged at this week's main season auction, with quality beans fetching premiums and expectations that those values would hold, traders said on Wednesday.
"Prices were very similar to last week's. The New York market was down two or three cents so we were differentially higher," a leading exporter said. "Prices will remain firm with the increased good quality."
Kenya's main coffee crop hits the market from late January onwards but is mostly sold in February.
Traders said coffee beans delivered during the previous seasons were still trickling into the auction and widening the difference between top and bottom prices.
"The top prices are by speciality buyers. We have last crop's coffees hanging around and that produces the big difference in prices," an official of the Nairobi Coffee Exchange (NCE).