>> Lack of rain in Vietnam may prop up coffee rally

Robusta coffee prices in London are attracting sales offers from Vietnam, the world’s largest grower, Hamburg-based coffee brokerage Eugen Atte GmbH said.

The NYSE Liffe coffee price was $140 a metric ton over the bean selling price in Vietnam yesterday, up from $120 a ton on Jan. 27, Atte said in a report e-mailed today and dated yesterday. Robusta coffee prices in London have climbed 7.4 percent this year.

“Exporters like to take advantage of the higher Liffe market,” Atte said in the report. Beans are being offered at “differentials next to tenderable parity,” meaning sellers are starting to break even.

Tenderable parity corresponds to the costs sellers have to bring coffee from Vietnam and sell it on NYSE Liffe.

“We are going to see more flow of robusta from January to June,” Andrea Thompson, an analyst at CoffeeNetwork in Belfast, Northern Ireland, said by telephone today. Coffee exports from Vietnam may rise about 9.4 percent to 1.28 million tons this calendar year, the government forecast Feb. 9.

Production in the 2010-11 crop year, which began Oct. 1, will rise 4.6 percent to about 1.12 million tons, while planted area expanded 1.8 percent to 548,200 hectares (1.35 million acres), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said.