Key producer Vietnam joins "better coffee" drive
HANOI - Vietnam, the world's biggest producer of robusta coffee, is imposing more rigorous standards for its beans and is joining an effort to keep inferior products off the market, an executive of a global coffee group said.
Stung by a slump in coffee prices to 30-year lows that has caused ruin for millions of farmers around the world, the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) has passed a resolution imposing minimum standards for the sale of beans from October 1.
These include limits on defects per 300 gram sample and moisture content. Moisture causes the beans to mould.
"Vietnam asked us to come and assess what they are doing (on improving coffee quality)," Pablo Dubois, head of operations at the London-based group that represents producers and importers, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.
While the communist-ruled southeast Asian country has not fully implemented the global standards, Dubois said that Hanoi had expressed its intention to do so. The ICO will be checking on Vietnam's progress next September.
Ironically, some may be saying Vietnam is reaping what it sowed -- its meteoric rise as a coffee producer has been blamed for the glut in lower-quality robusta, normally used in making instant coffee, and for the subsequent spiral in world prices.
Now, along with top coffee grower Brazil and other key producers such as Indonesia and Colombia, it is being asked to hold back poor quality beans to help world prices recover.
Brazil is expected to harvest at least 44 million 60-kg bags in the 2002/03 season that ends in June, up 59 percent from the previous year. Vietnam is expected to harvest around 10 million bags in the 2002/2003 crop ending September.
Down 54 percent
The ICO's composite indicator price for coffee, a weighted average of robusta and the higher-end arabica beans, has dropped by around 54 percent to 55 U.S. cents a pound currently, from peaks of 120 cents in the 1980s.
At its low, it dipped under 50 cents.
Dubois, on a four-day visit to Vietnam, toured a coffee cooperative, a research station and a quality control facility in the central highland province of Daklak and its capital city Buon Ma Thuot. Daklak provides around 60 percent of Vietnam's coffee exports.
He said his delegation, which included industry members from another robusta coffee grower, Ivory Coast, were impressed by the quality of the farms and coffee trees they saw.
Vietnam's current quality standard permits the sale of coffee with five percent black and broken beans. The latest rules allow the sale of beans graded one to three in criteria that check for defects like stones, as well as mould and unripe beans.
The ICO's Resolution 407 was passed by the 27 ICO exporter members. Consumer countries -- of which the United States is the largest -- have said they will keep tabs on how each coffee exporter is implementing the quality measures.
Vietnam is getting help on the standards from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation which is providing technical assistance to assess coffee quality.
Dubois said demands from buyers for better quality would help countries meet the standards. He noted that major coffee importer Taloca was already applying the new criteria to its purchases and was willing to pay more for better coffee.
The ICO is also trying to promote more coffee drinking. Dubois, who said he consumed five cups of coffee a day, said that even traditional tea-drinking cultures could be persuaded to embrace the beverage.
Look at Japan, for instance. "Back in the 1960s there was very little coffee consumed...now Japan consumes seven million (60kg) bags of coffee a year," he said.
Reuters - December 12, 2002
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