Coffee Traders Cough Up $7 Billion in Margin Calls in Wild Month
In Brazil’s Minas Gerais – the biggest coffee-growing state in the world’s No. 1 bean producer – farmers and exporters usually celebrate rising prices for the caffeinated commodity.
Not this year.
After several disappointing harvests, a sharp run-up in prices has left some big-name producers scrambling to square up their finances after finding themselves without sufficient cash to back their hedges on the exchange in New York.
Atlântica Exportação e Importação SA, for instance, which says it accounts for 8% of Brazil’s arabica sales, last week asked a local court for more time to negotiate with creditors in order to avoid filing for bankruptcy. Sister company Cafebras Comércio de Cafés do Brasil SA is seeking the same 60-day grace period. Industry watchers say they won’t be the last.
“Panic has hit the market with rumors that other trading companies could also face serious problems,” said Marcelo Moreira, a coffee specialist at Archer Consulting.
Futures prices for arabica beans — the variety favored for high-end brews — have been on a rampage, jumping around 70% between January and late November to the highest in more than four decades. Futures have since eased slightly but not enough to stem the pain. When prices rise, brokers require coffee producers and exporters to put up more cash in the form of margin deposits to cover possible losses. Some traders that sold futures are forced to buy them back to step away from the market, sending prices even higher in a vicious cycle. Moreira estimates as much as $7 billion was put up in margin calls during the month of November.
Arabica prices were essentially flat on Tuesday after earlier rising as much as 1.6% in New York.
At Montesanto Tavares Group Participações SA, which owns Atlântica and Cafebras, the cost to maintain hedges jumped to a staggering 158% of accounts receivable in November from 74% in May, according to a court filing seen by Bloomberg News. “The constant margin calls made the short-term cash structure unsustainable,” reads the document signed by lawyers of Atlântica and Cafebras.
The surging coffee prices are pushing the market toward a breaking point, echoing the recent troubles in other key commodities. In natural gas, prices spiraled out of control following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forcing national governments to bail out some European utilities. Earlier this year, cocoa futures climbed to the highest in data going back to 1960 on a global supply shortage, triggering defaults and litigation among trading companies. Since many major traders deal in multiple commodities, coffee’s run-up only adds to their pain.
“High margin rates are a huge stress on the financial side, and for trade firms with contracts on both coffee and cocoa, it’s a double whammy,” said Judy Ganes, president at J. Ganes Consulting.
In addition to the financial stress, the coffee market is also reeling from high logistics costs and inefficiencies. Coffee sellers spent an extra 7 million reais ($1.2 million) this year on things like additional storage space and other port fees, Brazilian exporters group Cecafé said. Shipping costs between coffee-producing countries in Asia and consumer markets in Europe are also rising amid the crisis in the Red Sea. Additionally, concerns are mounting that the next arabica coffee harvest will be smaller due to a severe drought.
“It’s the most aggressive movement I can remember in terms of domestic prices readjustments in a very short window,” broker Thiago Cazarini wrote in a report. Between higher borrowing costs and operational costs, it’s “all leading to stressful, not to say, business-killing atmosphere.”
