Asia coffee: Sluggish trade in Vietnam on low prices, Indonesia quiet

[HANOI] Asia's top coffee exporters saw sluggish trade this week, with the bean market in Vietnam slowing on falling prices while Indonesia's main harvest ended and stocks receded, traders said on Thursday.

Farmers in the Central Highlands, Vietnam's largest coffee-growing area, sold coffee at 32,300-32,500 dong (S$1.90-1.92) per kg on Thursday, down from 33,000 dong last week.

Domestic prices fell further this week following a decrease in global prices, traders said.

January robusta coffee settled down US$42, or 2.97 per cent, at US$1,370 per tonne on Wednesday.

"Sales are slowing as farmers are complaining that prices are too low now," said a trader based in the Central Highlands.

"They are refraining from selling beans as current prices are just slightly higher than the production cost," he added.

Vietnam's coffee exports in the first 11 months of 2019 fell 14.6 per cent, from a year earlier, to about 1.47 million tonnes, official data shows.

Traders in Vietnam offered 5 per cent black and broken grade 2 robusta at a US$90-100 premium per tonne to the January contract on Thursday, flat from last week.

Meanwhile, Indonesia's grade 4 defect 80 robusta beans were offered at premiums of US$200 to January contract, unchanged from a week ago, a trader in Sumatra's Lampung province said.

Another trader said the beans are being offered with US$250-270 premium to January contract.

"Trade is getting increasingly quiet week by week, likely will remain like this through the end of the year," one trader said.

Indonesia exported 15,798.5 tonnes of Sumatran robusta beans from Lampung province in November, up 41 per cent from a year earlier, official data released on Monday showed.

REUTERS