The pound of aromatic rose 4.3 per cent from June 2024, when it recorded the highest price in 13 years.
The price of the pound of coffee on the international market reached an unrecorded value in more than a decade after being quoted at $2.36, according to the International Coffee Organization (OIC).
The OIC – of which El Salvador is a member – has been a member of the Composite Composite Price (CIP) since the 1960s, as a reference for producers and buyers. It is made from the soft, other soft, natural and robust Colombian categories, listed on the New York and London Stock Exchange.
According to the OIC, the price of July exceeded the June mark by 4.3% ($2.26), when it was placed as the best in 13 years.
Positive price pressure on the market continues to apply, not only because of the small surplus of one million bags in the coffee year 2023/24, but also because the cumulative average of 10 years of the production balance remains negative at -1.9 million sacks, the OIC explained in its monthly report.
However, the OIC warned that news of possible cuts in central bank interest rates and the dissipation of frost in the producing regions of Brazil, the world’s largest grain producer, could lower the quotation.
He explained that, due to interest rates, it is more expensive to keep coffee stocks, so buyers and roasters buy coffee on short-term contracts, translated into increased activity on the market.
Compressed exports
Despite the rebound in price, exports of coffee in all its forms from Mexico and Central America decreased by 4.2 % year-on-year, from 1.84 million bags (from 60 kilograms) in June 2023 to 1.76 for the same month of 2024.
The OIC noted that the fall is due to a “reflexion” in the lower production recorded in Honduras and Nicaragua, between 11.4 % and 21.1 %. The institution added that Honduran producers carry years of low harvest, while Nicaraguans still face the consequences of the bankruptcy of Mercon Coffee Group in December 2023, the largest in charge of exports.
In the case of El Salvador, the Salvadoran Coffee Institute (ISC) reports a drop in exports of aromatic 33.7 % in value and 30.6 % by volume. Between October 2023 and June 2024, producers sent 352,173 quintals of coffee to the foreign market, valued at $77.64 million.
According to the ISC, 155,030 quintals of coffee were no longer exported compared to the same period in the 2022-2023 cycle. The currencies generated, meanwhile, were $39.4 million below the previous cycle.
This article has been translated after first appearing in Diario El Mundo