Washed Coffee Stocks

Further confirmation of the low availability of Washed coffee came in the ECX December stocks which reported the lowest Washed coffee stocks in the last 4 years as follows:

This confirms our previous assertions that there was little 18/19 Washed coffee stocks in country; in addition arrivals of New Crop are also very much reduced, resulting in current ECX stocks being 3,000 MT lower than this time last year.

Meanwhile the crop in Guji area is at its peak with coffee ripe and picking heavy; there are some rumours that washing station owners are running short on cash to continue to buy at the current pace due to cash flow restrictions ( last year the price was 12 Birr/kg vs this year 20 Birr/kg) and the hording of processed stocks waiting for further devaluation of the Birr vs the USD before coffee is moved to ECX warehouses and offered for sale. Some stakeholders are expecting the price of cherry to fall next week as there will be less cash in the growing areas and fewer buyers.

Weather continues to favour a healthy development of the crop and processing.

Prices at ECX continue high due to reduced volumes on offer. We expect that at some point soon this situation will normalise and agrabes will start turning coffee into cash so that they can continue to operate at farm gate level.

by Charles Seara Cardoso