São Paulo – Coffee international sales declined 8.9% in April over the same month of last year, according to data released this Friday (29th) by the International Coffee Organization (ICO). Product shipments totaled 9.43 million of 60-kilo bags in this year’s fourth month, against 10.35 million in April 2014.
In the case of Brazil, the country exported a little less than 3 million bags, a decline of 3.8% over April 2014, according to the Brazilian Coffee Exporters Council (Cecafé).
ICO also released the figures of worldwide exports of the 2014/2015 harvest, which started in October of last year. Since then and until April, international sales dropped, but in a lower percentage, with 3.8% over the first seven months of the previous harvest. The total shipments stood at 53 million bags in this harvest against 54.8 million in the previous one.
ICO estimates a global production of 141.9 million of coffee bags for the 2014/2015 harvest, which means a 3.3% decline over the previous one. The production of Arabica coffee is expected to drop 2.8%, with the production of Robusta coffee dropping 4.1%, according to estimation done by the organization.
In 2014, the world consumption of the product reached 149.3 million bags. The majority of this demand came from traditional markets, which purchased 79.4 million bags. The commodity’s exporting countries consumed 46.2 million bags and the developing countries, 23.7 million bags. In all of them, the demand increased since 2011. It was of 75.9 million bags in the traditional consumers, 42.8 million bags in the producing countries and 20.7 million bags in the developing countries.
According to the ICO, currently, there’s a strong demand especially in the traditional markets, such as Canada, United States, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and European Union, but the potential for growth lied with the developing countries, such as Algeria, Australia, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Ukraine, besides the product’s exporting countries.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
