Vietnam’s Arabica coffee output to rise

Vietnam’s arabica coffee output in the new 2010/2011 crop will jump 21.6 percent to 45,000 tonnes, or 750,000 bags, thanks to an expanded planting area, a major exporter of the variety said on Thursday.

Vietnam’s arabica coffee output in the new 2010/2011 crop will jump 21.6 percent to 45,000 tonnes, or 750,000 bags, thanks to an expanded planting area, a major exporter of the variety said on Thursday.

Vietnam would export between 500,000 and 583,000 bags of arabica from the output, which accounts for 4 percent of the country’s total coffee, said Nguyen Van An, chairman and chief executive of Thai Hoa Vietnam Group Corp.

“Harvesting is now under way, earlier than usual due to some impact from rains,” An said. In the northern mountainous province of Son La, which has around 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres), the harvest has been 50 percent completed, he said. Last year, Vietnam produced 37,000 tonnes of its arabica variety, known more widely in the country as catimor, An said.

Thai Hoa is the country’s leading producer and exporter of arabica coffee. It ranks among Vietnam’s largest coffee exporters, along with Vinacafe, Intimex, Simexco and Inexim Daklak. Thai Hoa has arabica plantations in the northern provinces of Dien Bien and Hoa Binh as well as in the central province of Quang Tri but domestic supply has yet to match the group’s processing capacity, An said.

The firm is now able to process 400,000 tonnes of coffee annually and has now been growing catimor at two places in neighbouring Laos to supplement its production need, he said. Coffee farmers in several areas in the coffee growing province of Lam Dong, Vietnam’s second-largest after Daklak, have also started harvesting catimor, traders said.

Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of robusta, which is either blended with arabica beans for a lower-cost brewed coffee or processed into instant coffee. In order to raise more funds for expanding operations apart from bank credit, Thai Hoa Vietnam, now capitalised at 550 billion dong ($28.2 million), has planned to list shares on the Hanoi stock market, An said.- Reuters

Tags: Vietnam agriculture, Vietnam Coffee

Posted by VBN on Oct 18 2010. 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