Costa Rica’s coffee production in the next 2009-10 crop cycle, for which harvesting won’t start until October, is forecast to rise 5% to 1,671,270 60-kilogram bags, the official Costa Rican Coffee Council, or Icafe, said Friday.
This compares to total production of 1,591,477 bags in Costa Rica’s current 2008-09 cycle.
The crop cycle starts Oct. 1 and runs through Sep. 30 the following year but harvesting of the crop ended in April.
The forecast is the first for the next cycle, and also represents a marginal revision to the final output figure for the Costa Rican 2008-09 crop, which previously had been seen ending with production at 1.595 million bags.
The 2008-09 harvest, which ended down 15% on the 2007-08 crop of 1.876 million bags, was hit with a series of weather complications that delayed the maturation and picking of cherries and damaged output.
The final figure for the 2008-09 crop cycle makes the harvest one of the smallest coffee crops in Costa Rica’s coffee history since the 1960’ies, an Icafe official told Dow Jones Newswires.
An estimated 86% of Costa Rica’s total production is sold to the export market based on the average over the last three years.
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
