Brazil Expands Share of World Coffee Market

12/01/10

RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazil expanded its dominance of the world coffee market in 2009, accounting for 32 percent of all international sales of the bean, the Council of Coffee Exporters, or Cecafe, said Monday.

In second place was Vietnam, with 18 percent market share, followed by Colombia, with 8 percent.

The giant South American country exported 30.3 million 60-kilogram (132-pound) sacks of coffee last year, up 3 percent from 2008.

But the $4.27 billion Brazilian coffee exporters earned in 2009 was 10 percent less than revenues during the previous year.

Brazil increased its exports of higher quality arabica beans to 26.2 million sacks last year, a gain of 9 percent over the previous year that raised the Brazilian share of the global market for arabica to 46 percent.

In a statement, Cecafe director Guilherme Braga called last year’s performance positive and said the outlook for 2010 is “encouraging.”

“The market is reacting in a firm process of recovery,” he said. “Such that in the month of December 2009 the median price of a sack of coffee was $153.91, a value close to the price before the crisis.”

Cecafe expects Brazil’s coffee exports to total around 30 million sacks in 2010, resulting in revenues of between $4.6 billion and $4.8 billion.

The council said its optimism is based on figures showing that the recession has not significantly reduced coffee consumption in key markets such as the United States, Japan and Germany.

Brazil sold 6 million sacks of coffee to Germany in 2009, up 17 percent from the year before. Sales to the United States grew 13 percent to 5.8 million sacks.