Vietnam exported a record high of nearly 1.8 million tonnes of coffee during the 2017-2018 crop, 12.7 percent higher than the previous one, the Vietnam Coffee-Cocoa Association (VICOFA) has said.

Coffee harvest in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak

During the crop, which runs from October 2017 to September 2018, Vietnam shipped more than 29.9 million bags of coffee abroad and earned 3.48 billion USD. As prices of coffee beans has plunged to the lowest in the last 50 years, with each tonne being sold at 1,943 USD, 3.43 percent lower than the previous crop, the Southeast Asian country only experienced a slight increase of 8.43 percent in export turnover.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, some 1.57 million tonnes of coffee were sold abroad for 2.98 billion USD during the January-October period, up 21.3 percent in volume and 0.9 percent in value as compared to the same time last year.

The average coffee price in the ten-month period fell 16.2 percent to 1,901 USD per tonne.

Germany and the US remained the biggest coffee importers of Vietnam, with market share of 12.5 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively. Coffee shipments to Germany rose 14.4 in terms of volume, but decreased 6.6 percent in value. Meanwhile, coffee exports to the US declined 3.6 percent in quantity and 20 percent in value.

The International Coffee Organisation (ICO) said that coffee production during the 2017-2018 crop was estimated to grow 5.7 percent to 164.81 million bags. Brazil was the largest coffee producer in the period, followed by Vietnam and Indonesia.

Coffee supply was 2.58 million bags higher than demand, pulling coffee price down to 111.51 US cents per pound from 132.43 US cents per pound recorded in the 2016-2017 crop. Currently, coffee volume remains high in stocks of many importers, ICO said.

Since mid-October, Vietnamese coffee bean has been sold at around 35,600-36,700 VND per kilogramme, which goes up slightly but is still lower than average prices of the previous years. 

Vietnam’s coffee scarcity and Indonesia’s export limitation sparked an increase in coffee prices, experts said, but there is no bright prospect for coffee prices in the 2018-2019 crop due to abundant supply.-VNA