The Draught in the Brazilian Coffee Belt is History

With a week delay, past the first day of Spring in the Southern hemisphere, rains arrived to the vast Brazilian coffee belt “just in time” to support a massive flowering.

As a matter of fact, the arrival of Spring rains after an extended and intense drought period, promoted ideal conditions for an accumulated first, second and third flowering to open at once.

No losses caused by the dry spell can be reported.

An intense coffee flower fragrance invaded extensive Regions, Valleys, Prairies and breeze streams within the whole coffee Belt this past weekend, the scenery over the plantations gave snow cover impressions.

The rains were more then plentiful and other rain fronts from the South are already expected, these will help fixate and fructify the first flowerings and trigger the next one or two final flowerings which will happen before mid November.

This intense accumulated first flowering, sets the base for a very high quality crop for the 2011/12 season, the reason is “uniformity of maturation”. Brazil harvests all of its coffee in the June – September months, the uniform intense ripeness period in the plantations, will determine when producers should start the full harvest procedures in 2011 reaching a larger percentage of high quality green beans.

As this 2011/12 crop will arrive at the patios with a high ratio of ripe fruits, preparation processing will become more efficient and logistically stream lined as it will be in the lower productivity year.

Both the natural conditions and logistic structure seem to be flowing in the right direction for now, dry weather during the winter harvest period will complete this ideal condition equation.

Another interesting factor about intense uniform maturation is that pulping procedures become the best method of preparation as one can pulp more coffee, use less patio space per ton, dry quicker and store in less bin area when comparing to Natural preparation.

With the recent new demand for Brazilian pulped coffees, it will probably be easy to repeat the same 5 million exportable pulped product produced in 2010 through the lesser yield but more uniform 2011/12 crop.

As far as the potential volume for this next 2011 crop, I believe we are well set to produce about 40 million 60/kg bags. All we need are constant rains from now through April 2011 promoting sustained fruit growth.

In my last report, I made an estimate for the current and next crop supply against the expected internal and export demand. I also considered carry-over inventories.

Still looking at Brazil, APEXBRASIL “Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency” and ABIC, ” Brazils Roaster Association”, invited a large group of US coffee roasters and importers to attend the “Cafes do Brasil” Miami-Homestead Speedway Indy 300 end of season event. I attended representing Nucoffee-Nutrade and still brought some of my clients and green coffee crew.

It’s interesting to note how the Brazilian government, through its Trade and Coffee organizations is investing to promote Brazilian coffee, in its various forms and on a Worldwide campaign.

The same organizations are producing a fantastic promotion campaign for “Cafes do Brasil”during next year’s SCAA even in Houston where Brazil will be the featured Country.

It was nice to see Nathan Herszkowicz, ABIC’s ED, host all guests at the best VIP suite over the track. Later Natan, representing the season sponsors APEX and ABIC, delivered trophies and prizes to the race and season winners at a podium surrounded by the “Cafes do Brazil” logo.

The same organizations, Apex and Abic, are producing a fantastic promotion campaign for “Cafes do Brasil” during next year’s SCAA event in Houston when Brazil will be the featured Country.

Next stop: This week I will be flying to Guatemala where I will welcome our new Director for Quality Assurance at Wolthers Vittrup & Associates, Guilhermo Huezo. I will also have the opportunity to visit the production areas and learn about what’s expected for the coming crop, will keep you posted.

Meanwhile, have a great week!

Christian Wolthers

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