Coffee exports from Honduras in 2024/25 expected to rise 15% despite EU trade fears

TEGUCIGALPA, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Honduras’ coffee exports in the 2024/25 season are expected to rise 14.5% from the previous period to 5.37 million 60-kg bags, industry leaders said on Tuesday, despite concerns that shipments could be hit by an EU regulation that comes into effect later this year. Central America’s biggest exporter of the bean is seeing its exports boosted by better production this year as the harvest for the new season begins, said Pedro Mendoza, head of Honduras’ coffee organization IHCAFE. “The farms are better, the farmers have taken better care of them this year,” Mendoza said in an interview. He warned, however, of a European Union requirement that imported beans come from areas not linked to deforestation. The rule would ban sales of coffee — as well as cocoa, soy, palm oil, timber, rubber and cattle — if companies could not prove that the product comes from an area where forests have not been cut down in recent years. Mendoza said most of Honduras’ coffee ...