MILAN – Vietnam ’s coffee export earnings hit an all-time-high of US$4.08 billion in coffee year 2022/23, up 3.4% from the previous year, despite a drop in volumes. In the year ending September 2023, the country shipped nearly 1.7 million tonnes of coffee, down 4.5 per cent compared to CY 2021/22.
This was made possible by a 5.5% increase in the average coffee export price, which reached $2,451 per tonne.
Exports of Robusta reached 1.5 million tonnes worth $3.2 billion. Arabica exports amounted to 41,500 tonnes in volume and $169 million in value.
Roasted and soluble coffee exports were about 90,000 tonnes earning $510 million. This equals to 5.4 per cent in volume and 12.5 per cent in value of overall coffee exports in the 2022-23 crop year.
In 2022/23, Germany was the largest coffee export market of Vietnam with 219,000 tonnes, followed by Italy with 156,000 tonnes, the US with 143,000 tonnes, Japan with 112,000 tonnes, Russia with 107,000 tonnes, Spain with 100,000 tonnes, Belgium with 73,000 tonnes, and Algeria with 64,000 tonnes.
The UK-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement and the UK’s participation in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership have been creating additional competitive advantages for Vietnamese coffee in the market, said Nguyen Canh Cuong, trade counsellor at Vietnams’s Embassy to the UK, quoted by VNS.
Over the past five months of 2023, the UK imported nearly 20,000 tonnes of coffee from Vietnam. The export price of Vietnamese coffee to the UK was 13.7 per cent higher than the general export price of Vietnamese coffee in the period.
Experts said the UK market is very competitive with imports from many countries. To keep stability in coffee exports to the UK, the Vietnamese coffee industry needed to meet increasingly stringent requirements as well as the consumer tastes of the British people, said VNS.
