MILAN – Arabica futures prices in New York reached new historic lows on Thursday on heavy fund selling. The benchmark contract for May delivery closed at 90.25 cents, 400 points (- 4.2%) down from the previous session, after slumping to 90.15 cents, its lowest level in over 13 years. This was the biggest daily percentage drop since late November.
Volume reached a record 176,379 contracts. Abundant supply continues to weigh on coffee prices.
Current supplies are robust as ICE-monitored coffee inventories of 2.493 million bags on Friday were just -0.4% below the 4-3/4 year high of 2.503 mln bags from Mar 25.
Weakness in the Brazilian real on Thursday was another negative for coffee prices since the weaker real encourages export selling by Brazil’s coffee producers.
The May contract for Robusta futures in London fell below the US$1,400 mark to a new three-year low of US$1,392 or US$32 lower.
In other news, sustoms data released on Wednesday showed Vietnam exported 172,080 tonnes of coffee in March, up 49.5 percent from February and higher than a government estimate of 160,000 tonnes.
