More than 10 tons of coffee beans and pepper cargo were stolen from the port! Vietnam's coffee trade credibility declines

Vietnam is the world's largest exporter of pepper and the world's second largest exporter of coffee. Recently, due to the impact of El Ni ñ o, Vietnam has been hit by drought. Although Vietnam entered the rainy season in May, the rainfall is not enough to alleviate the loss of crops caused by the drought.

As a result, in the first five months of 2024, Vietnam's pepper exports reached 114400 tons, down 13.2% from the same period last year, but pepper exports reached US $493 million, up 20.6% from the same period last year.

As a result of the decline in Vietnamese coffee production, coffee exports have also fallen at the same time. According to Vietnamese customs data, Vietnam exported 79358 tons of coffee in May 2024, down 47.8 percent from the previous month, while in the first five months of this year, Vietnam exported a total of 817514 tons of coffee, down 5.8 percent from the same period last year. This also makes the current price of coffee high. In Vietnam, the purchase price of coffee ranges from 118 million to 120 million dong / ton.

Recently, however, export goods such as pepper and coffee were stolen at the port of Geelai, Vietnam, resulting in a reported loss of 19 tons, including 10.3 tons of coffee beans and 8.2 tons of pepper (worth about 2.7 billion dong).

According to reports, the Vietnam Pepper and spices Association (VPSA) said that the theft began in September 2023 and continues to this day, with a total of eight shipments lost, including four batches of pepper and four batches of coffee beans belonging to five companies. The loss of goods accounted for 7-28% of the freight volume, all of which occurred in the unloading area of Gillay Port, with a total of 19.2 tons of cargo, and the largest loss was more than 4.6 tons of coffee beans.

The enterprise that lost the goods said that after the lost goods were delivered to the foreign partner and received the notification from the partner, the Vietnamese enterprise began to conduct an internal investigation. The preliminary results show that the container weighing order loaded by the factory is consistent with the weighing order when entering Gillay Port.

As a result, many merchants suspect that the goods were lost when the containers were unloaded at Gillay Port waiting for export. However, Xigong Xingang, the company in charge of the port, believes that the process of moving goods from the seller's warehouse to the buyer's warehouse must go through several stages in the supply chain, such as sea transport, to the port of discharge, and from the port to the importer's warehouse. Therefore, it must be verified to avoid misunderstanding and affecting the reputation of the company.

With regard to this incident, VPSA believes that the loss of goods will cause Vietnamese exporters to compensate or fine their partners, cause direct financial losses to the enterprises, and indirectly affect the future contracts of the exporters.

And, at present, Brazilian coffee has entered the harvest period, Brazil Robusta coffee harvest progress of 51%. Recently, Brazil's Robusta exports have been increasing, alleviating many vacancies due to reduced coffee production in Vietnam and Indonesia, as well as the Red Sea crisis affecting Eurasian routes. as a result, many traders have turned to buying Brazilian Robusta coffee beans.

Not only that, Vietnam's coffee trade was defaulted earlier because coffee farmers were unwilling to sell coffee beans, and in addition to this port incident, the reputation and image of traders and enterprises as well as Vietnam will also decline in the international market, which is not conducive to Vietnam's economic development.