By Roberto Samora
CAMPINAS, Brazil (Reuters) -Rebuilding global coffee stocks may take at least a couple of good crops following successive deficits in the supply-demand balance, coffee industry officials said on Friday during a Coffee Dinner & Summit event in Brazil.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Global coffee prices hit a record high earlier this year, amid supply issues and resilient demand.
Even with a large harvest expected next season in Brazil, the world’s largest producer and exporter, that may not bring immediate relief for coffee consumers.
KEY QUOTES
“I do not believe (the industry will be able to) build up stocks from this year to next year. I think we would need at least two good harvests,” the commercial superintendent of Brazilian coffee co-operative Cooxupe, Luiz Fernando dos Reis, told Reuters on the sidelines of the event.
“To replenish the stocks we had four years ago, it will take at least two years of very good harvests, if everything goes well,” said Louis Dreyfus Company’s coffee research director Charles Chiapolino.
“And we know how difficult it is to keep the climate aligned across the world for two years in a row, it’s almost impossible,” Chiapolino added.
“At the moment, no one can build stocks with demand stable, or growing in some countries,” said the chief executive of the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, German Bahamon.
WHAT’S NEXT
Reis, from Cooxupe – the world’s largest coffee cooperative – said that even if Brazil produces a large harvest in the 2026/27 season, the following crop is not expected to be as good since the main coffee variety grown in the country, arabica, alternates in a biennial cycle of high and low output.
(Reporting by Roberto Samora; Writing by Andre Romani; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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