Kerala flood may lead to 20% cut in India's coffee output: Trade body

Kerala Floods - India's coffee production in 2018/19 is likely to fall by at least one-fifth from a year ago as floods in key producing states damaged the crop and delayed exports, industry officials told Reuters.

Some of the worst flooding in India in a century killed hundreds of people in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka earlier this month, both of which account for more than 90 per cent of the country's total coffee production.

"Earlier we were expecting better crop than this year. Now we are expecting at least 20 per cent drop in the production," Ramesh Rajah, president of the Coffee Exporters' Association of India, told Reuters.

The severe crop loss was reported in the coffee-growing regions of Kodagu in Karnataka and Wayanad in Kerala, while the Chikmagalur and Hassan districts in Karnataka also reported damage on limited scale, he said.

The South Asian country, famous as a tea producer, is also the world's sixth-largest coffee grower, according to India's state-run Coffee Board, mainly churning out the robusta beans used to make instant coffee, but also producing some of the more expensive arabica variety.