Brazil coffee stocks up 31pc in 2019 at 12.8mn bags

SAO PAULO: The amount of coffee in the hands of private companies in Brazil reached 12.8 million bags as of March 31, up 31% from the 9.8 million bags seen a year earlier, the government's food supply and statistics agency Conab said on Thursday.

Conab, which conducts annual research on the level of coffee stocks in Brazil, said most of the coffee in warehouses at the end of March was arabica, at 92% of the total, or 11.8 million bags (see table below).

It is the highest level of stocks since 2016, a result of a record crop in 2018 of almost 62 million bags, according to Conab.

More than 9 million bags of the stocks were in Minas Gerais, Brazil's leading coffee producer and home to the country's largest coffee exporter, the Cooxupé cooperative.

Conab said in the report that there is basically no coffee in the hands of the government currently.

The government used to stock large amounts of coffee in warehouses to be able to control the flow of the product and sustain prices. But that policy changed and past governments sold all the stocks.