DJ Brazil Coffee Harvest 'Terribly Late' - Ipanema Coffees SAO PAULO (Dow Jones)--


Brazil's coffee-harvest season is going to be short-lived this year, with the crop "terribly late," said Ipanema Coffees president Washington Rodrigues on Friday. "I've been with Ipanema Coffees for 20 years and we always started harvesting around April.

This year, it's June and we are just getting started," he said. The late harvest is due to a late flowering season in December. This gives farmers less time to harvest the 2008-09 crop, Rodrigues said. In September, he said, what is left on the coffee bushes will start to fall off, "because the trees will start to produce flowers and cannot do that if it still has the beans on the branches."

Bean quality, not yields, will likely be affected. Brazil should harvest around 50.2 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee beans, agribusiness consultancy Safras & Mercado said this week. "Anyone who is trying to ship out coffee in June is going to have to pay a fine, and move that shipment to July," Rodrigues said, citing scarcity of old-crop coffee beans in Brazil at this time.

Roughly 3.5 million bags are available in Brazil as of June, based on export figures, local consumption and the National Commodities Supply Corp.'s private stock figure of around 10.3 million bags as of March 31. "The spot market is happening elsewhere, not in Brazil. International buyers will have to buy at ports overseas if they can't find anything here this month," Rodrigues said.

Ipanema Coffees of Minas Gerais state is the largest coffee farm in Brazil, selling specialty coffee beans to international markets under the Ipanema brand name. Brazil is the world's No. 1 coffee exporter.


Source -By Kenneth Rapoza, Dow Jones Newswires, 5511-6847-4541, kenneth.rapoza@dowjones.com