Vietnam’s Coffee Exports To Bounce Back

Some of our band of writers are football (or soccer, if you’re American) fans. So excuse us for a moment as we use a rather odd word to describe the forecast for Vietnam’s upcoming coffee exports. That word is bouncebackability.

Vietnam is going to display its bouncebackability. If reports are to be believed.

A US official from the Department of Agriculture has suggested that Vietnamese exports of coffee will jump up by 30% this season.

Why?

Well last season, shipments of coffee tumbled. Low prices on the global market forced many farmers to keep stock back in the hope that prices would rally at some point down the line.

As a result, 22.1m bags of Vietnamese coffee were sold. A drop of nearly a quarter from the 2013-14 season, but better than what some industry insiders were predicting.

With prices higher than they were and a stronger than expected harvest on the horizon, exports are predicted to top 28m for the 2015-16 period.

If this does indeed happen, the USDA believes that the South-Eat Asian nation will “re-emerge as a major supply source.”

However, this positive project is at odds with internal speculation.

Vicofa, the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association, has forecast a 20% drop in output, the result of dry weather and aging crops.

But, as a USDA official pointed out, some farmers have managed to work around the dry spell.

“Despite lower-than-average rainfall during the coffee flowering stage in April in the Central Highlands, farmers were able to compensate for the lower rainfall with targeted irrigation.

“This allowed farmers to save water and help coffee trees receive adequate water during [this period].”

Rabobank, a multinational financial service company, said that this practice prevented “a loss of production.”

USDA’s estimates represent an all-time high for the country. So it could be a very exciting and profitable twelve month period for the Vietnamese coffee industry.