DJ Mexico 2009-10 Coffee Harvest Down To Max 3.8M-4M Bags

By Maja Wallengren Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

MEXICO CITY (Dow Jones)–Mexican coffee production in the new 2009-10 crop cycle is seen down and not expected to reach more than 4 million 60-kilogram bags, several of the country’s top exporters said Tuesday.

Exporters representing over 65% of Mexico’s total coffee exports in the last 2008-09 crop cycle told Dow Jones Newswires that the crop had suffered from bad weather across all the key coffee growing areas.

“Coffee is coming in, but everybody is talking about that there is less coffee available because weather has really been a disaster in both Veracruz and Puebla, and Chiapas has not been good either,” said one major exporter official.

Southern Chiapas is Mexico’s largest coffee producing state, which accounts for about a third of national output in a cycle with average weather. Veracruz is the second largest growing state with 20% to 25% of production while Puebla is the number 3 state with between 15% and 20% of total output, according to official statistics and industry estimates.

Exporters agreed that the 2009-10 harvest was going to come in between 3.8 million and 4 million bags, down from the last 2008-09 harvest, which was seen reaching between 4 million and 4.6 million bags depending on private and official sources.

“Last year was one of the best crops in the past 10 years, but we still don’t believe it was as high as the 4.6 million bags the government talked about, but rather production reached about 4 million bags,” said another exporter.

Total coffee exports from Mexico from the beginning of the crop cycle Oct. 1 until Jan. 31 were up 16% to 664,943 bags, Amecafe said earlier this month, but exporters said the higher exports were not due to a larger crop, but because of shipments of stocks from the last cycle.

“It’s still too early to say exactly how much lower the harvest is going to be, but it’s definitively lower. There has been too much rain in both Puebla and Veracruz and in Chiapas weather has not been as good as we had expected,” said a third exporter.

The private Mexican Coffee Producer Association, Amecafe, last year estimated the 2008-09 coffee harvest to have produced 4.4 million bags in total output, flat on output in the 2007-08 harvest. A forecast for the new harvest has yet to be issued.