Vietnamese coffee prices picked up slightly on a rebound in London prices, while trade in Indonesia remained tepid ahead of a mini harvest in April, traders said on Thursday. Farmers in Daklak, Vietnam's main coffee-growing province, quoted beans 37,500-37,800 dong ($1.65-$1.66), up from a range of 36,500-37,000 dong a week earlier, in line with an increase in London prices.
The ICE May futures contract rose to as high as $1,807 a tonne on Wednesday, the highest intra-day level since Feb. 20, Thomson Reuters data showed. Vietnamese traders quoted the 5 percent black and broken grade 2 robusta at a discount of $60-$110 per tonne to the ICE May futures contract, from a discount of $70-$100 a week earlier.
Farmers have released more beans spurred by higher prices, although the pace was slow, while international buying moderated, traders said. Coffee exports from Vietnam, the world's largest robusta producer, rose 15.6 percent in the first two months of 2018 from the same time last year to 329,829 tonnes, customs data released on Thursday showed.
Traders expect coffee exports in March to increase to 150,000-170,000 tonnes from February when the Southeast Asian nation exported 129,893 tonnes, or a 35.3 percent fall from January. Vietnam had its biggest holiday in February, which contributed to the low exports value, traders said. In rival Indonesia, the grade 4 defect 80 robusta in Lampung province was traded at a $140 premium to the ICE May contract for a third week in a row, a trader in Bandar Lampung, the country's main coffee producing region, said.
Local companies contracted a small volume of beans this week, and the transactions volume is expected to pick up in April when a mini harvest starts, the trader said. The main coffee harvest season in Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest economy, is around June and July.
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