Coffee trade in Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer and exporter, came to a standstill as farmers and businesses held back on stocks to boost prices, traders said on Tuesday.
Prices in Vietnam's key-growing central highland province of Daklak stayed at 9,120 Dong (58 cents) per kg, unchanged from last on Tuesday.
Vietnamese robusta grade two, five percent black and broken was quoted at $625-$630 a tonne for spot shipment, FOB basis, also unchanged from a week but traders said the buying demand was weak.
"Nobody is buying or selling at this moment as foreign buyers are expecting prices to fall further and local businesses think the current prices unprofitable," a trader in Daklak's capital city of Buon Ma Thou told Reuters.
"But businesses can't hold their inventories for too long and will eventually have to give in and reduce their prices," he added.
Other traders cited the harvest peak next month in rival robust exporter Indonesia as another factor that would have a negative impact on prices in Vietnam.
To boost prices many domestics businesses are now investing heavily in improving coffee bean grades.
"Our prime goal is to lift the quality of our beans so that we can charge a premium for our products," said Le Thai Thanh Binh, director of Hung Binh Co, a local trading house based in Plaice, the capital of Gia Lai province.
Binh is spending nearly $1 million on a coffee processor to reduce the ratio of black and broken beans to one percent from five percent now.
Gia Lai, which is adjacent to Daklak, has 80,000 hectares (197,680 acres) of coffee under plantations, or nearly 20 percent of Vietnam's total.
Vietnam estimated on Monday its October-April coffee exports were 531,000 tonnes, or 8.85 million 60-kg bags, up 30.5 percent year on year.