Coffee harvesting in Vietnam may face at least a week's delay as pandemic-related curbs and quarantine requirements in the country's coffee-growing region hindered the cherry picking process.
Farmers in the Central Highlands, Vietnam's largest coffee-growing area, sold coffee at 40,500-42,500 dong($1.78-$1.87) per kg, unchanged from a week earlier.
"There is a shortage of people picking cherries here," said a trader based in Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands, which has seen a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.
"Some cherry pickers have contracted the virus, while others came into contact with the infected and were required to quarantine," the trader said.
New beans were expected to come by the second half of November, however, traders estimated that with the current labour shortage and travel restrictions between provinces, the harvesting time might be delayed by at least a week.
"Pandemic-related measures are not the same across the provinces in the Central Highlands and that has caused confusion among traders and may slow trading activities," another trader based in the same region said.
London ICE November LRCc2 futures settled down $2, or 0.1%, at $2,232 per tonne on Wednesday.
Traders in Vietnam offered 5% black and broken grade 2 robusta at discounts of $260-$300 per tonne to the January contract, widening from last week's $250-$270 discount range.
In Indonesia's Lampung province, Sumatran robusta was offered at discount of $250 to the January contract, unchanged from last week, a trader said, as the benchmark prices remained high while there were no new supplies at the end of the harvest.
Sumatra robusta coffee beans exports in October totalled 12,349.62 tonnes, down 51.5% from the same month last year, data from the local trade office showed.
($1 = 22,750 dong)
(Reporting by Mas Alina Arifin in Bandar Lampung; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
