HANOI: Vietnam’s coffee export market could be stable in coming weeks as a decline in global prices would force Vietnamese producers to further hold onto stocks, keeping the country’s export volume at par with the shipment in August, traders said on Tuesday.
Vietnam, the world’s top robusta producer, could export around 90,000 tonnes in September, the last month of the 2014/2015 season, while the remaining stocks could be loaded in the first weeks of the new season before the harvest peaks from late November.
“The market has been very quiet and it’s hard to buy coffee from Vietnamese sellers,” a trader at a foreign company in Ho Chi Minh City said. ICE November robusta contract dropped $30, or 1.8 percent, to settle at $1,611 a tonne last Friday, despite data showing falling stocks in Europe. The market was closed on Monday for a British public holiday.
Robusta beans in Vietnam tracked the fall, dropping to 35,100-36,000 dong ($1.56-$1.60) per kg on Tuesday in Daklak, the country’s largest growing province, from 35,700-36,200 dong a week ago. Premiums of Vietnamese robusta beans grade 2, 5 percent black and broken were offered at $60-$70 a tonne to the November contract, narrowing from premiums of $70-$80 last Tuesday.
Buyers mostly stood on the sidelines as they could only buy Vietnamese beans at a discount to London futures, traders said. Only several firms were taking deliveries to cover their short positions, another trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. Vietnam has so far exported 1.17 million tonnes (19.53 million bags) of coffee in the first 11 months of the 2014/2015 season, down 22 percent from a year earlier, government statistics show.
