Coffee plunges to 10-month low

FE Team | Published: June 14, 2025 21:55:03

NEW YORK, June 14 (Reuters): Robusta coffee futures on ICE hit a 10-month low on Friday amid good harvest progress in Indonesia and Brazil and improved prospects in top grower Vietnam, while sugar hit a fresh four-year low despite Israel's attack on Iran.
The attack sent oil prices surging, raising energy prices more broadly and increasing the incentive for cane mills in top grower Brazil to produce less sugar and more ethanol, a cane-based biofuel.
COFFEE
Robusta coffee settled down $27, or 0.6%, at $4,287 a metric ton, having hit a 10-month low of $4,133. Robusta posted losses for the last seven weeks.
Dealers said the weather in No. 2 robusta exporter Brazil remains benign and that with ICE stocks rising again, the market does not have many reasons to stay elevated.
In top robusta producer and exporter Vietnam, the weather remains favourable, dealers said, with rains coming at the right time, cutting down irrigation costs and allowing farmers to spend more on fertilizers.
The US Department of Agriculture expects Vietnam's robusta output to rise around 7% from a year earlier to a four-year high of 30 million bags in 2025/26.
Arabica coffee rose 0.2% to $3.46 per lb.
SUGAR
Raw sugar settled down 0.14 cents, or 0.9%, at 16.13 cents per lb, the lowest since April 2021. The contract lost 2.2% in the week, the fifth consecutive week of losses.
Sugar rose earlier in the session amid Israel'sstrike on Iran, whichraised worries over a disruption to oil supplies, sending energy prices higher.
Sugar's fundamentals, however, remain bearish given ample rains in key producers India, Thailand and China.
Thailand's sugarcane planting area for the 2025/26 season was up just over 8% from the previous season, boosting crop prospects, a senior sugar official told Reuters.
In the EU, however, early hopes for strong sugar beet yields were dampened by a dry spring, while reduced plantings are set to result in a smaller overall harvest.