World’s Leading Coffee Producer Poised to Overtake US in Consumption
With Brazil’s coffee consumption continuing to grow apace, it has been suggested that the world’s top producer of coffee could also become the world’s biggest consumer of the commodity by 2012.
Consumption of coffee in Brazil has been increasing by a reported 4 per cent per annum since 2003, according to Brazilian coffee industry comment, fuelled by rapid economic expansion that has had a knock-on effect on consumer spending power and led to a boost in the consumption of increasingly sophisticated coffee beverages outside of the domestic environment.
ABIC, which is Brazil’s coffee industry association, has reported that it anticipates local sales to increase by 5 per cent in 2011, to a volume of just over 20 million 60kg bags, for the domestic market alone. If this same growth is repeated in 2012, then it is likely that Brazil will be consuming more bags of coffee than the US, currently the world’s largest coffee consumer.
According to International Coffee Organization (ICO) data, 21.4 million bags of coffee were consumed in the US in 2009, which represents a 14 per cent increase on the volume consumed in 2000. Coffee consumption in Brazil on the other hand rose by 39 per cent during the same review period.
The country will be harvesting its next coffee crop towards the end of April to the start of May. In terms of its expect output, this is predicted to be between 41.9 million and 44.7 million 60kg bags. This figure would be slightly lower than the 48.1 million bags of 2009, as a result of the high-low cycle occurring biennially.