S'pore coffee contract targets Japan
S'pore coffee contract targets Japan
TOKYO (AFP): The Singapore Commodity Exchange (Sicom) said yesterday it was "confident" of attracting interest from the Japanese coffee and futures industry in Asia's first coffee futures contract to be launched next week.
David Chin, first deputy chairman of the exchange, said potential users in Europe, the United States, Indonesia and Singapore had already given a "very encouraging" response to the contract, which starts trading on Wednesday.
Speaking at a seminar to promote the new contract, Chin also said that Sicom had identified cocoa, sugar and non-ferrous metals such as aluminum, copper and zinc as commodities with future potential for trading at the exchange.
"Our mission is to become a premier price-discovery center for commodities in the Asian time zone," he said. "Asia-Pacific is a dynamic region and Sicom hopes to contribute to this region by enhancing Singapore as a trading place, a market place and a meeting place for a wide range of commodities."
Sicom, established three years ago, currently trades four contracts based on different types of natural rubber.
The Tokyo Commodity Exchange also has a rubber contract but like other exchanges in Asia has no coffee contract, forcing producers, consumers, dealers and speculators in coffee to use the major markets in London and New York.
During its six-day mission to Japan, one of the world's biggest coffee consumers, the exchange said it was meeting with 13 local companies including coffee roasters UCC Ueshima Coffee KK and Ajinomoto General Foods Inc. Others include the country's five big trading houses and major futures brokers.
Chin, who is also deputy chief executive of the Singapore Trade Development Board, said the robusta coffee contract had been "finetuned" following feedback from potential users during marketing missions to Switzerland, Germany, Britain, the United States and Indonesia in December and January.
The contract size is 10 tons and quotations are in dollars per ton with a minimum price fluctuation of one dollar.
The exchange has also set position limits of 2,000 lots while anyone holding more than 500 lots has to furnish a special report to the exchange.
Deliverable coffee from Asia includes robusta grown in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
Other acceptable origins are Angola, Brazil, Cameron, the Central African Republic, Ecuador, Ghana, Guinee, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, the Malagasy Republic, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Trinidad, Uganda and Zaire.