By IANS/EFE,
Rio de Janeiro : Brazilian coffee has increased its world market share to 32 percent in 2009, according to the Council of Coffee Exporters or Cecafe.
Brazil expanded its dominance of the world coffee market, accounting for 32 percent of all international sales of the bean last year, the Cecafe said Monday.
Vietnam grabbed second position with 18 percent market share, followed by Colombia with 8 percent.
The South American giant exported 30.3 million 60-kg sacks of coffee last year, up 3 percent from 2008. But the annual turnover of $4.27 billion was 10 percent less than the previous year.
Brazil increased its exports of higher quality arabica beans to 26.2 million sacks last year, a gain of 9 percent over the previous year that raised the Brazilian share of the global market for arabica to 46 per cent.
In a statement, Cecafe director Guilherme Braga called last year’s performance positive and said the outlook for 2010 is “encouraging”.
“The market is reacting in a firm process of recovery,” he said. “Such that in the month of December 2009 the median price of a sack of coffee was $153.91, a value close to the price before the crisis.”
Cecafe expects Brazil’s coffee exports to total around 30 million sacks in 2010, resulting in revenues of between $4.6 billion and $4.8 billion.
The council said its optimism is based on figures showing that the recession has not significantly reduced coffee consumption in key markets such as the US, Japan and Germany.
Brazil sold 6 million sacks of coffee to Germany in 2009, up 17 percent from the year before. Sales to the US grew 13 per cent to 5.8 million sacks.