LatinNews Daily - 14 June 2023

* Brazil’s national council of coffee exporters (Cecafé) has reported an export volume of 2.45m sacks of coffee (one sack = 60kg) for May (the 11^th month of the 2022/2023 harvest cycle), which marks a monthly drop from the 2.72m sacks exported in April. In year-on-year terms, this latest figure represents a 17.4% decrease from the May 2022 export volume. The value of exports for May this year came to US$544.8m, down from the value of US$604.5m registered in April this year and down 22.6% on sales in May 2022. According to the same report, 13.6m sacks of coffee were exported in the first five months of the year, down 19.3% on the same period in 2022 while in value terms, export sales were worth US$2.9bn in the first five months of 2023, down 24.4% on sales registered in the same period in 2022. Despite the slump, Cecafé president Márcio Ferreria is still optimistic for the next harvest cycle, stating that “the national coffee belt has not suffered from climate impacts until now and the prospects are good for the new harvest, with importers showing quite a lot of interest in buying our arabica coffee.”