Vietnam's coffee export loading in February is expected to rise to between 120,000-150,000 tonnes, or 2 million to 2.5 million 60-kg bags, as exporters cash in on price gains, traders said on Tuesday. Vietnamese farmers slowed sales even during their harvest peak late last year, and thinning supply from the world's second-largest producer after Brazil has contributed to higher London robusta futures prices.
Coffee exports plunged nearly 48 percent in January from a year ago to 112,000 tonnes because of the Tet new year festival and as farmers held back beans in the expectation of higher prices later. Traders said the higher price has encouraged farmers and exporters to part with beans, which would result in higher shipments this month.
"Sales have picked up in the past two weeks as prices edge higher," a trader at a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City said. London's March robusta contract closed at $2,074 a tonne on Monday, up 12.5 percent from January 30. Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, exported 144,000 tonnes of beans in February 2011.
Vietnamese robusta stood at 38,600-38,700 dong ($1.86) per kg on Tuesday in Daklak, the country's top producing province, around 4 percent higher than two weeks ago. Discounts to London's May contract stood at $20-$30 a tonne, placing robusta grade 2, 5 percent black and broken at $1,914-$1,924 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Saigon Port, up from $1,793-$1,867 a tonne last Tuesday.
The higher price has encouraged exporters to sell beans, while a number of foreign buyers also needed to take beans for March deliveries, leading to a surge in Vietnam's exports this month, a second trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. Two other traders projected the volume at between 120,000-150,000 tonnes.
Vietnam exported 370,500 tonnes, or 6.18 million 60-kg bags, of coffee between October 2011 and January, the first four months of the 2011/2012 crop year, down 26.7 percent from a year ago, based on the government's revised data and customs reports. That means Vietnam still had 14.52 million bags of coffee in the country at the end of January, based on a median 2011/2012 output forecast of 20.7 million bags in a Reuters poll last month. The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association, the industry body, said the next 2012/2013 crop "could get a significant output drop" as light rain destroyed flowers emerged during the harvesting time. It gave no figures.
Traders said some rain may have damaged flowers, but the assessment of a fall in output would be too early. The 2012/2013 crop year will start in October, while farmers have now been watering trees under the production cycle for the next harvest to start in late October or early November.