(For other news from the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit, click on http://www.reuters.com/summit/LatinAmericanInvestment09?PID=500)
By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA, May 4 (Reuters - The global financial crisis has begun to crimp demand for high-value coffees and retail sales of coffee products as consumers cut spending, the director of Colombia's National Federation of Coffee Growers said.
Gabriel Silva said the global coffee market remains in a deficit that has driven up premiums on high-demand origin coffees such as many of the arabicas produced in Colombia, the world's No. 3 coffee exporter.
"We are seeing a shift in coffee consumption away from coffees of high value to quality coffees that are more accessible," Silva said at the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit. "Now we are seeing an increase in coffee preparation at home, that means consumption is moving away from the store to the home."
Premiums on coffees such as Colombia's arabicas have skyrocketed due to shortages in supplies, but Silva said he expected those to normalize in the second half of this year as production in key exporters returned to historical averages.
Coffee production in Colombia, the largest exporter after Brazil and Vietnam, fell 9 percent in 2008 because of bad weather and a program to replace aging trees with new, more productive ones. But Colombia still aims to bring production up to 17 million 60-kg bags by 2014.
Silva said he expects coffee supplies in Colombia to begin to normalize after July and that output for the full year should be between 11.5 million to 11.9 million bags, according to preliminary estimates.
"ALL HORSES IN THE STALLS"
The slide in Colombia's coffee production has been compensated by a depreciation of the local peso currency against the dollar. It has weakened 29.5 percent in the last 12 months against the greenback.
The director avoided detailed discussion on the coffee federation's proposal along with Brazilian and Central American coffee organizations to buy a share of U.S. drinks giant Starbucks. But the deal depended on share price.
"We are preparing to carry out a transaction that will create a relevant share in Starbucks and we have, as they say in racing terms, all the horses ready in the stalls," Silva said. "What has happened is that the reaction of the market has been more rapid and agile than our advisors estimated."
The federation is also pushing on with its drive to increase the number of its branded Juan Valdez coffee stores worldwide despite the financial crisis. Ecuador and Chile are proving stronger markets while Spain's stores are under revision after the market there weakened.
Silva said he believed the current crisis offered a businesses an opportunity to reach out to demand from the world's poor instead of waiting for the return of previous credit-driven consumption of the United States.
"What do we have to do? Bring onboard other consumers who are not afraid and who have needs, we have to integrate the consumer world with the world of the poor," he said. "The real demand in the world economy will come from those countries and that requires promotion of a social transformation."
(For summit blog: http://blogs.reuters.com/summits/)
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Patrick Markey in Bogota; Editing by Richard Chang)