Saudi Arabia has been increasing its purchases of industrialized coffee from Brazil, ANBA (Brazil-Arab News Agency) reported on Monday, citing data from the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (Abic). The data showed that Saudi imports, in volume, grew 316 percent in the first quarter this year compared with the same period in 2007 and 291.8 percent in revenues. Saudi Arabia was the 12th largest market for Brazilian industrialized coffee during the period, the report said. Revenues totaled $47,000, equivalent to two tons. Brazil is the leading coffee producer country in the world with some 2.3 million hectares plantation, producing an average of 19 bags per hectare. Brazil has increased roasted coffee grain and roasted and ground coffee exports by 145 percent in the first quarter of this year in comparison with the same months in 2007. Sales reached 1,700 tons. In the first quarter of the year, Brazil exported 694,600 tons of the product. “This trade growth shows that the companies are doing very well in the beginning of the year,” Abic president Guivan Bueno said. Brazil has been exporting these two kinds of coffee, considered industrialized, since 2002. Sales of industrialized coffee, which totaled $4 million in 2002, reached $26.6 million last year. From January to March this year, they reached $9.2 million, triple the value in the same months in 2007. The average price of exported industrialized coffee has also risen. It climbed from $4.36 per kilogram to $5.45. Last year, the country produced 33.4 million bags of coffee. For the 2008/2009 crop, the forecast is that 44.2 million bags should be harvested. The country is also the leading exporter of coffee with around 28.1 million bags sold to foreign countries. The increase over total exports in 2007 was 2.6 percent. Nathan Herszkowicz, executive director of Abic, who is also the executive president at the Union of Coffee Industries of the State of Sao Paulo, stated that the type of coffee to which the figures apply is the fully industrialized, ground and milled, variety, packed and sold under Brazilian brands. “Exports of industrialized coffee are recent began only in 2003 under the program of the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), the work of the Union and of the Abic,” he added. The Arab market is one of the targets of the Apex program for encouraging exports in the sector, Herszkowicz further said. “The Arab countries are already large buyers of Brazilian coffee bean,” he said, anticipating that the industrialized coffee sector expects to make much progress in the region in the future. Herszkowicz believed that there is a good market for the ground and milled product in the Arab world, given the fact that the Arab countries, along with Ethiopia, are the cradle of coffee. “It was widely consumed by the Muslims, it used to be very traditional in the East, before it even went to Europe and became known in the West,” he said. Abic expects industrialized coffee exports to the Arab market to grow approximately 30 percent this year, the same increase that should occur in overall foreign sales. “Our exports of industrialized coffee are seeing steep increases from year to year. For 2008, we are expecting growth of 30 percent, which can be surpassed,” Herszkowicz stressed. __
