Vietnam’s drought-hit Central Highlands coffee belt has been receiving a flood of rains since late last week. This has further deteriorated the situation for the coffee belt, lowering down the harvest and affecting the quality of beans.
The drying process in the world's top Robusta producer has been disrupted by these torrential showers, claims the traders on Tuesday.
The bean quality from the cherries picked up in late November might have even worsened and in fact, due to wet weather, more black beans are likely to deteriorate. As the beans are still in the drying process, the sales of the coffee beans farmers have also been adversely affected.
Though there are some local processing units which have drying machines and therefore, limited supply was coming from their end. Moreover, this is the second time in about a month that rains have affected the coffee harvest in Vietnam. During early November too, rains slowed down the harvesting pace of the Robusta coffee.
As per the weatherman, rains are likely to endure until Thursday in Daklak measuring an above average rainfall in recent years. As the drying pace has slowed down, so will be the exportable volume of the coffee beans as well.
As of November, around half of this year’s and expected next year’s crop were thought to be harvested and traded by mid-December.
As per the US Department of Agriculture, the output for Vietnam’s Robusta for the year 2016/2017 is projected at 26.6 million 60-kg bags, which is 8 percent lesser as compared to last season’s output.
Image Credit: mail & guardian
