Coffee traders scrambling to supply roasters with robusta beans are pinning their hopes on Brazil, as prices for the bitter bean typically used to make instant coffee hit 12-year highs after exports from top producer Vietnam slid.
Cooxupe, the world's largest coffee cooperative and Brazil's number one exporter, said on Friday it sees this year's coffee harvests in Brazil improving after climate issues stifled recent years' crops.
Ivory Coast voted on Saturday in a legislative election, with President Alassane Ouattara's allies facing a combined challenge from opposition parties led by two of his predecessors.
Ivory Coast's cocoa board will allocate a maximum of 200,000 tonnes of cocoa to local exporters this season, half as much as envisaged under a government decree to boost local firms' competitiveness, five industry sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Frost that struck Brazil's coffee belt this week has sparked fears of farmers defaulting on deliveries of recently-harvested coffee that were sold to commodities traders months ago at prices that now are half the current values.