High Vietnam coffee price spooks Asian exporters

Record domestic coffee prices in Vietnam have spooked exporters struggling to secure supply as farmers fail to honor contracts, while demand from local roasters is stirring up trade in Indonesia, dealers said on Friday.

Many farmers in Vietnam, the world’s largest robusta producer, refused to deliver beans to exporters after domestic prices rallied to an all-time high of 46 million dong ($2,205) a ton, creating artificial tightness in the market.

Vietnamese beans were offered at discounts of $100 to $120 a tonne to London’s May contract , smaller than discounts of $140 to $150 quoted last week. “I think half of the exporters are trying to fulfill the contracts from the previous crop. The farmers are the key problem,” said a dealer in Singapore. They don’t even care if you want to sue them in court. They just don’t want to sell their coffee even after you remind them that they had signed a contract a few months ago to sell beans at certain level, he added.

Vietnam’s 2010-11 output rose 2% from the previous season, slightly below past estimates, with some traders citing smaller beans as a reason for their downward revisions, a Reuters poll showed – Reuters

Tags: Vietnam Coffee, Vietnam coffee prices

Posted by VBN on Mar 7 2011. Filed under Agriculture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry