Robusta coffee prices may cool down in the second quarter

Robusta coffee prices continuously peaked in the first three months of 2024. On the European Intercontinental Exchange (ICE-EU), coffee prices reached their highest level in 30 years on March 27, increasing by 30% and 70%, respectively, compared to the beginning of 2024 and the same period in 2023.

The price of green coffee in Vietnam also set a new record, approaching VND 100,000 per kg.

Reduced supply in major exporting countries, strong demand in import markets, tensions in the Red Sea, depleted inventories, etc., are the causes of local supply shortages in consumer markets.

According to the European Coffee Federation (ECF), the amount of Robusta coffee stored in EU warehouses by the end of February 2024 is just over 110,000 tons, the lowest since 2019.

In the short term, the situation is unlikely to improve. El Nino causes dry weather in Vietnam and Indonesia. The Vietnam Coffee Cocoa Association (VICOFA) forecasts that production in the 2023-2024 crop year will decrease by 10% compared to the previous year to about 1.6 million tons. Meanwhile, Indonesia's robusta coffee output will be the lowest in 12 years, about 500,000 tons.

In the second quarter, some early robusta coffee growing areas in Brazil, including Espirito Santos, just harvested. This crop year, it is likely that Brazil will boost exports. From July 2023 to February 2024, the South American country exported five times more than last year.

Adding coffee from Brazil and some Indonesia is expected to help cool down coffee prices.

Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Quynh, Deputy General Director, representatives of the Board of Directors of the Mercantile Exchange of Vietnam (MXV), said that coffee prices will cool down from the middle of the second quarter but hardly decrease sharply.

"Market sentiment may be more stable when there is additional supply from Brazil and Indonesia, but the amount of goods from these two countries is not enough to compensate for Vietnam," he said.

World robusta prices are expected to increase to USD 4,000 per ton, then gradually decrease.