Mexico 2008-09 Coffee Exports End Up 8.6% At 2.775M Bags

Saturday, October 10, 2009

MEXICO CITY (Dow Jones)–Mexican coffee exports in the now-completed 2008-09 harvest cycle ended 8.6% higher at 2,774,680 bags of 60 kilograms each, the Agriculture Ministry’s coffee department said Friday.

This compares with Mexican coffee exports of 2,555,366 bags in the previous 2007-08 cycle, which runs from October through September, the ministry’s Sistema Producto Cafe said in a report, a copy of which was seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

Mexican coffee exports in September, the 12th and final month of the 2008-09 harvest cycle, meanwhile, amounted to 197,489 bags, up 6.7% from exports of 185,014 bags in the same year-earlier month.

Mexico’s 2008-09 coffee harvest was forecast to yield up to 4.4 million bags in total output, flat compared with output in the 2007-08 harvest, the Mexican Coffee Producer Association, Amecafe, said earlier this year.

At the beginning of the cycle last October, the harvest had been expected to rise 10% to 15%, Amecafe said, but weather problems in the key growing state of Chiapas have made this unlikely.

Mexican coffee exports in the 2007-08 crop cycle ended down 12% from shipments of 2,893,351 bags in the 2006-07 cycle, the ministry said last year.

-By Maja Wallengren, Dow Jones Newswires; mwallengren@hotmail.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires
10-09-09 1611ET
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