Instability of coffee in Brazil has pushed the futures price of Arabica coffee to its highest level since 2017

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

ICO said in a recent report that Arabica coffee prices rose for the fifth month in a row in March, the longest in nearly five years. Arabica prices rose 0.8% in March from February, bringing the figure to the highest level since September 2017. At present, the price of Arabica has risen 13.7% compared with the same period.

In the report, ICO highlighted the tight supply of Arabica due to weather conditions in the producing areas, which also pushed the price of Arabica coffee to its highest level in more than three years. Due to the instability caused by the COVID-19 and last year's drought in Brazil, uncertain forecasts often provided by the market support coffee prices and exacerbate the volatility of the upward trend.

The ICO report comes amid concerns in some countries about a shortage of coffee harvesting workers as a result of the COVID-19 quarantine. Sucden Financial has expressed the Colombian government's concern about the "shortage of coffee pickers" and pointed out that coffee harvests in Central America will be lost and unharvested in recent months as a result of last year's double hurricanes and labour shortages.

But Colombia's coffee production totaled 1.05 million bags in March, up 30 per cent from 806000 in March 2020, according to figures released recently by the National Federation of Coffee growers (FNC). In the first three months of 2021, Colombian coffee production totaled 3.238 million bags, an increase of 13 percent from 2.857 million bags in the same period last year. So far, Colombian coffee production has totaled 7.583 million bags in 2020, up 2 per cent from 7.412 million bags in the same period last year.

The price of Colombian Arabica coffee beans rose 0.3 per cent to 177.49 cents per pound in March, the highest level in six years, according to ICO. The price of Arabica coffee beans in other small Central American producing areas rose 0.4 per cent to 167.05 cents per pound, the highest level since 2017.

In Brazil, Marex Spectron raised its forecast for a global shortage of Arabica coffee beans from 8 million bags to 10.7 million bags because of declining production forecasts for Brazilian Arabica coffee beans. The price of Brazilian Arabica coffee beans rose 1.7 per cent to 122.16 cents per pound last month, a 15-month high.

ICO said that Brazilian exporters are currently taking advantage of this period of rising prices to continue to export coffee, with Brazil exporting 2050 bags of coffee between October 2020 and March 2021, a year-on-year increase of 24 percent. However, since February this year, the growth rate of Brazilian coffee exports has slowed to 9.0%. The market believes that this is because the supply of Brazilian coffee has become difficult as coffee has been exported in large quantities in the 2020 Universe 21 season last year.

(the number of new confirmed cases in Brazil and the trend of coffee prices)

At present, COVID-19 in Brazil is very unstable! The number of cases increased by 4196 on April 5, local time, which once again set a new record for the single-day diagnosis of COVID-19 in Brazil. The local government also immediately took further epidemic prevention measures, stopping port transportation, etc., which also hindered the export of Brazilian coffee. Cepea, a research institute, predicted that the remaining coffee from the 2020 season 21 would be exported in May along with the new season beans 2021 Universe 22.

For more boutique coffee beans, please add private Qianjie coffee on Wechat. WeChat account: kaixinguoguo0925