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October 6th-10th: Arabica versus Robusta

Here at DRWakefield, we source both Arabica and Robusta coffee beans to sell on to our roasters, taking an equal interest in both varieties.

However, it is of course interesting to look at how each type of bean is faring on the market in comparison to the other, which is just one of the many aspects our regular coffee market reports look into.

In this blog, we're going to take a look at how the performance of Arabica and Robusta compared between Monday October 6th and Friday October 10th.

It was a fairly quiet week for Robusta-related news, with the value of this coffee variety remaining fairly steady on both the London and New York Stock Exchanges. There was a slight drop in its general price during the five-day trading period though, as it fell by $6 from Monday to Friday.

However, this could be set to change, as the world's main producer of Robusta, Vietnam, is expected to export in the region of 100,000 tonnes of these beans during October. This equates to around 1.67 million 60 kg bags and will follow on from September's high shipment volumes.

There was a little more action in relation to Arabica coffee throughout the week, with the market fluctuating significantly.

In both Tanzania and Kenya, the price of Arabica rose at auction and in one highly dramatic 60-second period, the market value of these beans increased by an entire ten cents in a single minute.

Colombia in particular saw significant Arabica-related action between the 6th and the 10th, with reports from the Coffee Growers' Federation showing there were approximately 912,000 60 kg bags produced during September. This was an increase of six per cent from the same month in 2013.

Furthermore, shipments of Colombian washed, mild Arabica coffee were up by 23 per cent compared to September 2013, with 830,000 bags sent overseas to traders like us at DRWakefield.