Bogota, Aug. 6 - Colombian coffee reserves are running thin and exports will be cut hard if a seven-day-long truck drivers' strike lasts into next week, the head of the country's exporters association said Wednesday.
Shipments of the prized beans have already been slowed from the country's main port, Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast and from Cartagena on the Caribbean.
Truckers parked their rigs on Thursday and refuse to budge until their pay rates are raised.
"No coffee at all got to Buenaventura today," Jorge Lozano, head of the Association of Colombian Coffee Exporters, told Reuters. "The port has reserves in its warehouses, but if the strike continues into next week exports will be dramatically impacted."
Trucks are needed to haul beans from plantations in Colombia's central highlands to coastal shipment points.
Talks aimed at lifting the work stoppage were stalled over truckers' key demand that they be paid more to offset increases in fuel prices and highway tolls.
"No negotiation meetings are scheduled," said Nemesio Castillo, president of the Colombian Truck Drivers' Association.
Drivers say the government of President Alvaro Uribe has not enforced a deal reached weeks ago aimed at improving freight payment rates and other conditions.
Imported goods are being warehoused in Colombia's ports. A spokeswoman for the Buenaventura facility said it has room to store arriving goods for two more weeks.
Colombia, a prime source of arabica beans, is the world's third biggest coffee exporter after Brazil and Vietnam.
The Andean country, whose coffee industry is personified by mustached advertising icon Juan Valdez and his mule Conchita, exported 5.8 million 60-kilogram bags of coffee in the first half of this year.
This month Colombia will export between 750,000 and 800,000 bags, down from 977,000 in the same month last year, Lozano said, citing a thin crop in the first half of the year. A prolonged strike, however, could cut projected exports.
Arabica coffee trading on ICE Futures U.S. consolidated lower Wednesday in a range-bound session pressured by producer selling in Brazil and the stronger dollar, U.S. traders said.
The firm greenback makes dollar-traded commodities like coffee more expensive for investors holding other currencies.
The benchmark September arabica contract settled down 2.30 cents at $1.379 per lb, after moving from $1.372 to $1.4095.