By BUSINESS REPORTERTANZANIA’S robusta coffee prices rose at auction this week, buoyed by continued strong demand and an improvement in the quality of beans supplied to the market, the regulator Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB) said on Friday.
State-run TCB said 32,435 60-kg bags were offered at the latest sale, of which 28,595 bags were purchased. At the previous sale, a total of 22,367 60-kg bags had been offered and
20,605 bags sold.
"There has been an improvement in the quality of coffee supplied to the auction this week, and this has been reflected by the increasingly high prices that the coffee bags fetched at the latest sale," Primus Kimaryo, director of quality and promotion with the state coffee board said."Traders were very competitive in the auction, with some of them looking to cover their short positions. We have seen that demand for robusta coffee has still remained very high."Traders snapped up all the robusta coffee on offer at the auction.
Tanzania, Africa's fourth-largest coffee producer after Ethiopia, Uganda and Ivory Coast, produces mainly arabica and some robusta coffee. Prices of its arabica normally track the New York market, while those of robusta take direction from London.
The TCB expected the 2012/13 (June/April) crop to rise to 55,000 tonnes from around 32,000 tonnes in the previous season.
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