Dec 6 - Colombia's coffee output is likely to decline by 300,000 bags next year as the nation plans a major re-planting drive to boost yields in coming years, a top industry official said on Thursday.
Colombia, which grows the arabica variety of coffee, is expected to produce 12.6 million 60-kg bags in 2007.
"We will re-plant more than 50,000 hectares which will go out of production," said Luis Gomez, Asian representative of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia.
"It is too early to say but we estimate around 300,000 bags less next year. We will go back to 2006 output levels."
Colombia is studying a plan to boost output by up to 33 percent over five years by replacing some of the oldest coffee plants and pruning back others to encourage new flowering. Half of Colombia's 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) under coffee cultivation have an average age of around 22 years. Coffee plants reach their best yield potential at 10 years.
Colombia is the world's third-biggest coffee producer after Brazil and Vietnam.
But the country does not plan to expand its coffee area, Gomez said. "There is no plan to increase the area, the plan is to achieve higher productivity with new trees."
Colombia's coffee exports for this year are expected to reach 11.2 million bags, from 10.9 million bags in 2006, industry official say.
The country mainly sells to the United States, Japan and Germany. It is looking to boost sales to new markets in Asia as Japanese buying was stagnating.
"As you know that the Japanese population is ageing and consumption is not increasing but there is scope for speciality coffees," Gomez said on sidelines of an industry seminar.
"We are looking to increase sales to other markets like South Korea, China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand."
He said China was importing only 10,000 bags of Colombian coffee a year but there was much scope to sell more.