With regard to certified stocks of coffee in the four New Orleans warehouses whose licenses have been suspended, the Committee is recommending that the prohibition on the delivery of such stocks and the moving of such stocks to another licensed warehouse be retained at this time.
These recommendations are expected to be considered by the NYBOT Board at a meeting on Wednesday, December 14, 2005. If the NYBOT Board acts upon the recommendations, approximately 523,000 bags of certified coffee in New Orleans would be deliverable against the March 2006 contract, based on current certified stocks data. Any action taken by the Board will be made public at that time.
On August 30, 2005, NYBOT declared that because of the situation that existed following Hurricane Katrina, no delivery notices could be issued for delivery in the Port of New Orleans until such date as the Board determined, so that the conditions of the warehouses and the coffee stored therein could be determined.
On September 21, 2005, the NYBOT Board prohibited the certification of any coffee in the Port of New Orleans until such date as the Board determines.
Subsequently, on September 28, 2005, the Board declared that no Exchange-licensed warehouse operator could accept for storage in a licensed store any coffee that has been held in a warehouse located in New Orleans since August 27, 2005, unless such coffee has passed such tests and standards which the Exchange may specify.
Thereafter, the NYBOT Board directed the Coffee Committee to make recommendations and the Coffee Committee, in turn, appointed a Working Group to develop procedures for conducting a review of the condition of these stocks and determining what, if any, additional standards should be met as a condition to delivering such coffee under Exchange contracts. The Working Group determined to have Exchange-licensed Samplers draw samples from 10% of the certified lots held in the New Orleans stores that retained their Exchange licenses, and Exchange-licensed Graders were directed to examine the condition of the samples for mold and any other condition and of the presence of any off odors. The Exchange previously released the Graders’ findings that 17.5% of the New Orleans samples had off odors and 6 had mold noted.
The New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) is New York’s original futures exchange, where the world trades food, fiber and financial products. For well over a century, the New York Board of Trade has provided reliability, integrity and security in a global marketplace for cocoa, coffee, cotton, ethanol, orange juice, pulp and sugar, as well as currency and index futures and options. Information about the New York Board of Trade can be found at www.nybot.com and www.nybotlive.com.
