Brazil green coffee exports fall to 2.36mn bags in March -Cecaf?

SAO PAULO: Brazil exported 2.36 million 60-kg bags of green coffee in March, well below the 2.77 million bags reported a year earlier despite a larger crop, exporter association Cecaf? said on Tuesday.

It is the second consecutive month of smaller green coffee shipments amid slow farmer selling. Brazil is also in the peak inter-crop period, as producers prepare to start harvesting in the next few weeks.

Exports for the crop year that started in July totaled 23.05 million bags through March, down from 25.36 million bags in the comparable period in the previous season.

Instant coffee shipments showed a recovery in March, reaching 343,278 bags compared with 254,135 bags in February. The increase came despite a tight domestic supply of robusta beans, which made the government evaluate imports of this type of coffee which is largely used to produce the soluble form of the drink.

Robusta green bean exports amounted to only 20,000 bags in March, as basically all the available domestic production has been taken by local roasters and instant coffee producers. Arabica green coffee exports totaled 2.34 million bags versus 2.70 million bags a year earlier.

The world's largest producer and exporter harvested a record coffee crop of 51.37 million bags in 2016. The production is expected to fall to between 43.6 million and 47.5 million bags this year, as trees recover from the high previous output.