SAN JOSE Coffee growers from Central America, Mexico and Peru will meet in Costa Rica on Thursday to finalize accords on how much of the region's lower-quality beans will be retired from global export markets, a coffee official told Reuters on Sunday.
The measure goes above and beyond global agreements by coffee-producing nations to hold back about 20 percent of exports in an effort to boost prices, which have been hovering stubbornly near six-year lows amid an international coffee glut.
"The idea is to reinforce the coffee-retention scheme agreed upon by the ACPC," or Association of Coffee Producing Countries, Juan Jose Osorio, a director for the Honduran Coffee Institute, said in an interview at the International Coffee Week (SINTERCAFE) conference in Costa Rica.
Honduras, which produces about 3 million (46-kg) bags of coffee a year, expects to recall about 300,000 bags of low-quality beans from export markets, effectively doubling the amount of Honduran coffee removed from stocks that were originally slated for export, Osorio said.
Meetings Thursday are expected to result in decisions from the other nations in the Central American coffee bloc about how much lower-quality coffee they will remove.
Osorio said agreements could force a drop of as much as 10 percent in export forecasts for the region, which produces about 20 million bags of coffee a year.
Last week, the producing members of the Central America, Mexico and Peru coffee region announced they would destroy or dispose of portions of their harvest to help stimulate retention efforts.
Low-quality coffee will be burned, used to fuel machines to dry coffee beans, or used for fertilizer, Osorio said.
(Reuter)