The price of coffee in the Central Highlands has hit its highest level for two years, with a kilo now worth VND31,500. In Dak Lak alone, Vietnam’s key coffee growing area, the price has even risen to VND32,400 per kilo of beans.
The Vietnam Coffee and Cacao Association (Vicofa) attributed the rising prices of coffee beans in the domestic market to insufficient supplies on the world market and also traders and coffee funds around the world buying to stockpile.
Consecutive heavy rains in Vietnam ’s major coffee growing areas may affect the early harvest and worry investors about future supplies of coffee beans, said Vicofa.
According to coffee-growing provinces, due to the recent abnormal weather conditions, growers may harvest all the 2010-2011 crops in late November.
The Central Highlands provinces currently grow 452,000 ha of coffee and produce 950,000 tons of beans a year.
In the first ten months of this year, Vietnam exported 973,000 tons of beans for USD1.4 billion , according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
While the volume increased by 1.6 percent year on year, the value decreased slightly, by 0.7 percent, due to a 2.44 percent drop in the world price.
Germany remains Vietnam’s largest coffee customer with an import value of USD176 million , or 14 percent of Vietnam’s coffee export earnings. It is followed by the US .
In the meantime, Vietnam is seeking to grow new varieties of coffee with large yields and resistant to pests and insects.
Of the country’s 500,000 ha of coffee, which produce nearly 1 million tons of beans a year, more than 100,000 ha are over 20 years old.
The five new varieties of Robusta, developed by the Tay Nguyen Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology Institute, will yield between 3.5-4 tons or even 5-7 tons of beans per hectare, a rise of 30 percent over current harvests.
The new Robusta varieties can produce crops with 70 percent first-grade beans, 40 percent higher than existing coffee varieties.
