A flurry of speculative buying pushed London coffee prices to a fresh 4-1/2-year peak on Thursday as large speculators indulged their new taste for robusta for a second session, traders said. Liffe's benchmark May contract peaked at $953 a tonne - the highest since the market touched $980 on July 20, 2000. It closed at $949, up 2.5 percent after an intra-day low of $915.
"There was one story - fund buying, which triggered general speculative buying and probably some trade buying too," a dealer said. On the sell-side, he noted profit-taking and some origin producer pressure.
He expected further activity from non-commercial players on Friday.
Turnover on the May contract was 11,359 lots, more than half the 19,668-lot total.
Further out, the July contract gained $25, or 2.6 percent, to $972. It moved between $938 and $976 on volume of 4,489 lots.
September also attracted significant volume, shifting 2,064 lots to gain 2.6 percent to $992.
Benchmark robusta prices are now up almost 70 percent in the past four months. The rally had mainly reflected aggressive fund investment in the New York arabica market until Wednesday, when a push through the key $900 area, a lack of origin selling and a widening arbitrage with New York drew in the large speculators.
Arabica has surged about 60 percent since late October but has a stronger fundamental base because of a likely production drop next year due to weaker output from No 1 arabica source Brazil. There are no such fears for top robusta grower Vietnam, although farmers there have begun to hold back beans in recent weeks on expectations drought will hurt next season's yields.
African farmers should have more say in the world pricing of coffee and are working hard to upgrade their exports to win a bigger chunk of the market, a senior industry official told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Livingstone, Zambia on Thursday.
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