Arabica and Robusta Coffee Futures Slide on Looming Brazil Supply Boost

December arabica coffee (KCZ26) settled lower by 13.35 points, or 3.98%, on Wednesday, while November ICE robusta coffee (RMX26) declined 77 points, or 2.09%.

Coffee prices tumbled to one-week lows on Wednesday and finished sharply lower. Expectations that Brazil’s ongoing coffee harvest will deliver increased supplies to the global market triggered long liquidation across coffee futures. The majority of warehouses in Brazil have stopped accepting new coffee shipments as storage capacity fills, indicating that farmers withholding sales in anticipation of higher prices will likely need to accelerate sales as available space diminishes. Robusta coffee also faced pressure after ICE robusta coffee inventories surged to a nine-month high on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, arabica coffee reached a 7.5-month high and robusta hit a 2.5-week high, driven by the slower pace of Brazil’s harvest. Brazil’s Cooxupe co-op reported on Wednesday that 87.5% of the harvest was complete as of August 21, up six percentage points from the previous week but still slightly behind the 91.3% recorded a year earlier. Additionally, Safras & Mercado reported on August 14 that Brazil’s 2026/27 coffee harvest was 90% complete as of August 12, trailing last year’s pace of 97% and the five-year average of 94%. Brazil’s arabica coffee harvest stood at 86% complete, compared with 95% at the same point last year.

Declining inventories are providing support for arabica coffee prices, as ICE arabica coffee inventories dropped to a 2.75-year low of 224,617 bags on Wednesday. In contrast, rising inventories weighed on robusta coffee, with ICE robusta inventories climbing to a nine-month high of 4,943 lots on Tuesday.

Coffee prices have also received support from the devastating earthquake earlier this month in Colombia, the world’s second-largest producer of arabica beans. The 7.4 magnitude quake impacted the coffee-growing provinces of Caldas and Risaralda, which together account for roughly a quarter of Colombia’s production.

Colombia has partially resumed coffee exports through the Buenaventura port, which handles the majority of the country’s coffee shipments, according to a Bloomberg report on August 13 citing the head of Colombia’s coffee exporters association, Asoexport. However, traffic through the port remains intermittent and restricted. The report noted that the earthquake caused no significant damage to coffee processing and milling facilities, according to exporters.

Concerns that an El Niño weather pattern could damage Brazil’s coffee crop next year are providing a bullish backdrop for prices. Coffee trader Commercial indicated that the El Niño pattern may delay rains in Brazil during September and October, when tree flowering typically occurs, potentially harming Brazil’s 2026/27 coffee crop. On July 8, the US Climate Prediction Center warned that the El Niño weather pattern that emerged across the equatorial Pacific last month is likely to be one of the strongest in more than 75 years. This sets the stage for extended periods of potential floods, droughts, and temperature fluctuations later this year that could disrupt coffee production across Asia and South America.

Below-normal rainfall in Brazil is expected to accelerate the pace of the country’s coffee harvest, a bearish factor for prices. Somar Meteorologia reported last Monday that just 0.6 mm of rain, representing 11% of the historical average, fell during the week ended August 16 in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, the country’s primary arabica-coffee growing region.

Surging coffee exports from Vietnam, the world’s largest robusta producer, are weighing on robusta prices. On August 2, Vietnam’s National Statistics Office reported that the country’s 2026 coffee exports (January through July) rose 21.1% year-over-year to 1.31 million metric tons. Vietnam’s 2025 coffee exports jumped 17.5% year-over-year to 1.58 million metric tons. Additionally, Vietnam’s 2025/26 coffee production is projected to climb 6% year-over-year to a four-year high of 1.76 million metric tons (29.4 million bags).

The latest USDA biannual forecast added to the bearish sentiment for coffee prices. On July 22, the USDA projected that global coffee output in the 2026-27 season will rise 6.0% (10.8 million bags) to a record 189.7 million bags, primarily driven by improved growing conditions in Brazil. The agency expects global arabica production to increase 12% year-over-year, although robusta production is forecast to decline 0.7% year-over-year. World ending stocks are projected to rise by 1.9 million bags to 26.3 million bags. On June 3, the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) forecast a record 2026/27 Brazil coffee crop of 71.9 million bags, up 14% year-over-year.

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