Brazil’s Coffee Exports Seen Reaching 2.1 Million Bags

Brazil’s Coffee Exports Seen Reaching 2.1 Million Bags
BLOOMBERG (USA)
 
Coffee exports from Brazil, the world’s largest producer, may be about 2.1 million bags this month, almost the same as shipments in January and February, according to Flavour Coffee.

“The pace of March shipments is about the same pace as February,” the Rio de Janeiro-based broker said in an e-mailed report yesterday.

Exports in February totaled 2.14 million bags, while shipments were 2.06 million bags in January, data from the country’s coffee export council, known as Cecafe, show. Growers in Brazil may be still be holding back 15 to 20 percent of the 2011-12 crop, Kona Haque, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in London, said in a report e-mailed on March 20. The 2011-12 season there started in July. A bag of coffee weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds).

Coffee output in the South American country will likely rise to a record in the 2012-13 season as trees enter the higher-yielding half of a two-year cycle, the government estimates. Production will be 49 million to 52.3 million bags, exceeding the high of 48.5 million bags in 2002, according to a Jan. 10 report from Conab, the government’s forecasting agency.