Global coffee exports up 17% in Oct

World coffee exports rose by a little over 17 percent to 88.76 lakh bags in the first month of the current coffee year that started from October, due to a significant spurt in shipments from Vietnam and Indonesia, according to the International Coffee Organisation (ICO).

Global coffee exports stood at 75.70 lakh bags in October 2011. The coffee year runs from October to September. One bag contains 60 kg of beans. According to the latest ICO data, the coffee shipments rose in most exporting countries during October this year but the maximum increase in quantity was seen in Vietnam and Indonesia, the world's second and third biggest exporters.

Vietnam witnessed a two-fold increase in exports at 19.5 lakh bags during October 2012 from 9.75 lakh bags in the same period last year, while Indonesia's coffee exports rose to 8.40 lakh bags from 4.94 lakh bags in the review period.

Similarly, exports from  rose to 2.45 lakh bags from 1.84 lakh bags. A similar trend was seen in Mexico, which exported 2.32 lakh bags of coffee in October 2012, against 1.77 lakh bags in the year-ago period.

However, shipments from Brazil, Colombia and India fell during the same period, the ICO data showed. Brazil, the world's largest coffee exporter, shipped only 28.74 lakh bags during October this year as compared with 31.75 lakh bags in the year-ago period.

While shipments from Colombia fell to 5.82 lakh bags from 6.02 lakh bags, exports from India declined marginally to 3.16 lakh bags from 3.17 lakh bags in the review period.

Last year, the world coffee exports had touched a record 107.8 million tonnes driven by shipment of robusta varieties. Availability of coffee is expected to be sufficient as ICO has pegged that global production in the current year at 148 million bags, up 10 percent from last year.