India's coffee output to hit a record on summer rains

India’s coffee output, the third- biggest in Asia, will increase 17 per cent to a record next season after summer rains over the nation’s main growing region boosted crop prospects, the state-owned Coffee Board said.

Production will climb to 306,300 metric tonnes in the year beginning October 1, compared with 262,300 tonnes forecast for this year, the agency said in its so-called “post-blossom” estimate. The harvest will include 204,775 tonnes of Robusta beans and 101,525 tonnes of Arabica, the board said in an e-mailed statement.

Increased supplies from the South Asian nation, which exports 80 per cent of its production, may extend a 36 per cent drop in robusta prices in London in the past year. The bitter- tasting bean is used in instant coffee. India’s previous record production was 301,200 tonnes in the 2000-01 season.

“The crop is in good shape after the plantations received well-distributed summer rains before and after the blossoms,” D R Babu Reddy, an agricultural economist at the Coffee Board, said in a phone interview from Bangalore.

Robusta coffee for September delivery declined $1, or 0.1 per cent, to close at $1,465 a tonne on the Liffe exchange in London on Friday. The most-active futures earlier touched the lowest price since the contract started trading in January 2008.

India’s crop was damaged last year by heavy monsoon showers in the nation’s biggest coffee-growing state of Karnataka. The province is forecast to harvest 221,475 tonnes next season, 21 per cent more than this season, the board said.