Vietnam's Coffee Export Industry Explained

How much Vietnam exports

Export figures vary depending on whether a source reports a USDA marketing year, a calendar year, or a partial-year period, so exact numbers should always be read alongside their specific timeframe. USDA's semi-annual coffee report forecasts Vietnam's marketing year 2025/26 exports, spanning October 2025 through September 2026, at 27.3 million 60-kilogram bags green-bean equivalent, 8 percent higher than its estimate for the prior marketing year.

Calendar-year reporting tells a related but distinct story. Ascentium's analysis of the 2025 market reports that Vietnam exported approximately 1.59 million tonnes of coffee across the full 2025 calendar year, generating record export revenue of more than US$8.92 billion, an increase of about 18.3 percent in volume and 58.8 percent in value compared with 2024. That sharp value increase reflects a period of historically high global coffee prices layered on top of rising export volume.

More recent 2026 reporting shows a shift in that trend. VnExpress International reported that Vietnam's coffee exports for the first half of 2026 reached US$4.78 billion, down 14.4 percent year-on-year, even though export volume rose 9.7 percent to 1.1 million metric tons over the same period. VnEconomy, citing Vicofa, later reported nearly 1.7 million tonnes exported in the first eight months of 2026, worth more than US$6 billion. Export volume rose by more than 10 percent year-on-year, while value fell 11.2 percent as average prices declined.

The first eight months of 2026, read correctly

Reporting on Vietnam's January-August 2026 coffee exports uses figures that describe different measurement points rather than a genuine contradiction. Vietnam.vn's article distinguishes them directly: Customs Department data as of August 15 showed export volume at 1.26 million tonnes worth US$5.72 billion, an interim snapshot partway through August. Separately, Vicofa's estimate for the complete first eight months of 2026, through August 31, put total export revenue above US$6 billion, an 11.2 percent decline compared with the same eight-month period in 2025.

VnEconomy and VnExpress International both reported the same later eight-month pattern: nearly 1.7 million tonnes exported and more than US$6 billion earned, with volume up year-on-year and value down because average prices fell. Read this way, the two headline numbers are not competing claims about the same period. The Customs figure captures a partial month through August 15, while the Vicofa-based figures describe the complete eight-month total through August 31.

What is consistent across the reporting is the underlying trend: export volume has generally risen year-on-year through 2026, while export value has declined compared with 2025's unusually high prices. That matters for readers because an industry can ship more coffee and still earn less total value if per-tonne prices fall sharply enough.

Where Vietnamese coffee goes

The European Union has long been, and remains, Vietnam's largest coffee export destination as a bloc. USDA's semi-annual report identifies Germany as the largest single importer of Vietnamese coffee in MY2024/25, at approximately 3.2 million bags, up 6 percent year-on-year, followed by Italy, Spain, Japan, and the United States.

For the full 2025 calendar year, Vietnam.vn's reporting names Germany as the top single-country market at US$1.23 billion, followed by Italy at US$700 million, Spain at US$630 million, Japan at US$611 million, the United States at US$507 million, and Russia at US$462 million. These are 2025 full-year figures, not January-August 2026 data.

For 2026 itself, VnExpress International's H1 report confirms Germany, Italy, and the United States as the three largest six-month markets, at 14.1 percent, 7.9 percent, and 6.9 percent of total export value respectively. Later eight-month reporting cited Germany, Italy, and Japan among the leading destinations. The exact rankings shift slightly by period, but Germany and Italy remain consistently prominent.

Who exports Vietnamese coffee

Vietnam's export volume moves through a mix of large trading houses, multinational affiliates, and domestic private companies, and different sources rank these companies using different, non-interchangeable metrics: shipped volume, export revenue, or self-reported production capacity. These measures do not always produce the same ranking, and this page keeps them separate rather than treating any single metric as the definitive national ranking.

The strongest volume-based ranking available for this page comes from Vietnam Briefing's citation of Statista data for the 2022/2023 crop year, which ranked exporters by actual shipped tonnage: Intimex Group JSC led at 148.53 thousand tonnes, followed by Vinh Hiep Co. Ltd. at 120.51 thousand tonnes and Simexco Daklak at 102.58 thousand tonnes. Separately, Ascentium's analysis of full-year 2025 results reported export revenue rather than volume, finding that Vinh Hiep Co. Ltd. generated more than US$520 million in 2025 export revenue, while Intimex Group JSC posted around US$407 million on Ascentium's figures.

A third type of figure, self-reported production or export capacity from supplier-directory sources such as Virfq, describes what a company says it is capable of exporting rather than a verified, government-confirmed shipped volume or audited revenue figure. Across all three types of figures, the same small group of companies, Intimex, Vinh Hiep, and Simexco Daklak, appears consistently prominent, even though their relative order shifts depending on whether volume, revenue, or stated capacity is used.

Vietnam's export industry at a glance