INTERNATIONAL COFFEE MARKET – Part Two2 min read

As promised in the first installment of our series of articles dedicated to the international coffee market for the “Bestfoodimporters.com” website, we shall now focus our analysis on each of the four main groups of coffee blends: Colombian Milds, Other Milds, Brazilian Naturals and Robustas.

According to the International Coffee Organization, for the total volume of coffee exported for the international coffee consumption market, a new record of 111.1 million bags was reached in the 2012 – 2013 period, an increase of 3.2 percent when compared to the 2011-2012 period. Columbian Milds and Brazilian Naturals led the charge on this significant increase of exports, while the exports of Robustas blends marked an increase of only 3.6 percent and the exports of Other Milds registered a decrease in volume of 7.7 percent. Thus, the driving force in the previous coffee year when it comes to the specific blends consisted in exports of Colombian Milds and Brazilian Naturals. Nonetheless, the four group indicators corresponding to the four types of coffee blend registered an overall decrease during the 2012/13 period with, according to the yearly report published last year by the aforementioned International Coffee Organization, “the annual averages of Colombian Milds, Other Milds, Brazilian Naturals and Robustas down 28.8%, 28.1%, 32% and 4.2%, respectively compared to last year.”

Lets see now how the situation presents itself in the first months of 2014. Using as standard unit of measurement the 60 kilo bags, the total volume of exports from the exporting countries to all destinations was as follows: 9.260.202 for the month of February 2014, 10. 274.395 for the month of March 2014, 10.241.210 for the month of April 2014, 9.736.616 for the month of May 2014, 9.341.020 for the month of June 2014 and 9.726.593 for the month of July 2014. The volume of exports divided by types of blends in the aforementioned months of 2014 is detailed in the following table:

When we focus our attention on the exporting countries themselves, Brazil leads for the month of July 2014, with 2.981.370 60 kilo sacks of Arabica and Robusta blends, followed by Vietnam, with 2.100.000 60 kilo sacks of Robusta blend. A strong third contender is Columbia, hovering close to one million 60 kg sacks of Arabica blend coffee exported in every month of the February 2014 – July 2014 period.

Image courtesy of Stirling Noyes – Some rights reserved

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