Indonesia's 2011-12 coffee output revised up, Colombia's cut: ICO

The International Coffee Organisation (ICO) has revised up its coffee output projection for the current 2011/2012 crop from Indonesia, the world's third-biggest producer, but lowered its forecast for Colombia. Indonesian production is seen at 8.75 million bags from 6.67 million bags estimated earlier, while output from No 4 producer Colombia is cut to 8.5 million bags from 9.2 million bags in an earlier estimate, ICO Executive Director Roberio Oliveira Silva said.
Based on the latest forecasts, Indonesia's output would still fall 4.2 percent from 9.129 million bags in the 2010/2011 crop year, while Colombia's production would stay nearly flat against 8.523 million bags in the previous season, he said in slides presented to a coffee conference on Thursday. ICO kept its production forcast for Brazil steady at 43.15 million bags, down 10.3 percent from the 2010/11 crop, and Vietnam's output at 18.5 million bags, down 5 percent from 19.467 million bags a year ago.
The previous data were issued in the ICO report for October. The Colombian Coffee Growers Federation did not have a forecast on the country's next 2011/2012 crop, but an official said heavy rains would cut the volume. "Rains will not hurt the quality but the quantity of beans," Santiago Pardo, the federation's representative for Asia, told Reuters.
The Colombian government's goal was to raise coffee output to 14 million bags by 2014, he said. Colombia has been trying to alleviate the problem caused by erratic weather by rejuvenating trees, bringing in new varieties and using more fertilisers to boost yield, Pardo added.
Indonesia, the world's third-largest producer after Brazil and Vietnam, has a plan to expand its arabica output to 30 percent of total production by 2020, from 10-15 percent now, said Surip Mawardi, a senior researcher at the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute.
The country, with around 1.3 million hectares of coffee under plantation, would conduct intensified farming at existing areas, such as the highlands of Sumatra, Sulawesi and Papua, as well as to expand to new suitable areas, he said. Coffee consumption in Indonesia has also been growing significantly in the past decade, Mawardi added. "We like to be a coffee-consuming country like Brazil," he said at the conference.