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MILAN – Coffee prices continued to fall during the second trading session of the week. On Tuesday 7 October, both New York and London saw a further decline, albeit less pronounced than the previous day. The ICE Arabica contract for December delivery lost 595 points (1.6%), following a 940-point drop on Monday, to settle at 375.40 cents — the lowest level since the start of the month.
The ICE Robusta contract for November delivery fell by $113 in two days, closing yesterday at $4,414. Last Friday, coffee futures had risen close to their mid-September highs, driven by forecasts of dry weather in Brazil’s coffee belt and fears of possible crop damage in Vietnam’s Central Highlands due to heavy rains caused by the tail end of Typhoon Bualoi.
This time, weather reports from Brazil brought more encouraging news, with widespread rainfall forecast in Minas Gerais and São Paulo, although this may not be enough, as we will see later.
There was also positive news from Vietnam, where the General Statistics Office reported that exports for the first nine months of calendar year 2025 had grown by 10.9%, totalling 1.23 million tonnes, or 20.5 million bags.
But how is the flowering of the Arabica crop going in Brazil?
The latest updates report that flowering has been abundant thanks to the rainfall so far (an average of 20–25 mm), but its success in the coming weeks will depend on the amount and pattern of future rainfall.
Complicating matters further, temperatures in the Cerrado Mineiro have already exceeded 30 degrees Celsius at the start of spring.
“What worries us is the weather, since the rains haven’t continued,” Fernando Couto, a grower and agronomist working in the area, told Reuters.
In most irrigated farms, the flowers have already opened, Couto added, but in non-irrigated plantations, the situation is more problematic, with most expecting flowering this week, especially since rain is forecast for today and tomorrow.
However, rainfall distribution will not be uniform. Southern Minas Gerais is expected to receive about 90 mm of rain over the next 15 days, compared to just 30 mm in Cerrado Mineiro.
As agricultural engineer Jonas Leme Ferraresso explains, the ideal situation is for at least 40-60 mm of rain to fall in the days following flowering.
According to Guilherme Vinicius Teixeira – coordinator of the geoprocessing department at Cooxupé, Brazil’s largest coffee cooperative – the recent rains have induced flowering, but “it is a little too early to determine whether the fruit load will be good,” Teixeira told Reuters.
Adriano Rabelo, technical coordinator of Minasul, another major cooperative, also remains vague, observing that “for a good harvest, we will obviously need rain in the coming days.”
In areas monitored by Minasul, the opening of flowers has been disappointing in some cases.
“We have observed that some plantations are flowering slowly and irregularly, probably due to adverse weather conditions,”said Minasul’s commercial director, Héberson Vilas Boas Sastre, quoted by Notícias Agrícolas.
“The distribution of rainfall and fluctuating temperatures have significantly affected the flowering process, resulting in some areas flowering and others not. The characteristic uniformity of flowering, with a predominance of white (flowers blooming on the trees), has not been widely seen across the region,” he added.
Record harvest in Colombia
According to data released by the National Federation of Coffee Growers, Colombian coffee production for the 2024/25 crop year (October–September) increased by 17% to reach a total of 14.87 million bags, marking the highest production level in 33 years.
Production in the last month was 1.14 million bags, an increase of 7% on-year. Over the past 12 months, exports amounted to 13.3 million bags, up 12%.
However, the Federation’s CEO, Germán Bahamón, warns that production could decline in the newly begun year due to vegetative stress of the trees and less favourable weather conditions in the first half of the year.
