Poor harvest may raise coffee price

Press, 9 January 1986, Page 4

Poor harvest may raise coffee price

PA Auckland Coffee prices in New Zealand threaten to rise significantly after Brazil’s crop failed this year. New Zealand importers believed prices could leap locally within a month, as an international buying spree in London pushed prices to $B.BO a kilogram from a pre-Christmas price of about $6 a kilogram. New Zealand traders hoped the international speculation would settle down and coffee prices would drop again before local supplies needed replenishment. Mr Tony McKee, of Bushells, said: “The price is unlikely to

settle at that high level.

We’ll be buying in the next few weeks and hopefully the price will have dropped.” He could not predict how much more New Zealand consumers would have to pay. “The price of coffee has been rising steadily over the last year but we’ve been able to offset that with the rise of the New Zealand dollar.” Traders said the price increase could be further kept down by importing coffee from elsewhere. Brazil supplies almost a third of the world’s coffee exports, but its crop has been halved by drought.